Manchester, United Kingdom | AFP | Another season will pass without Champions League glory for Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, but few will forget the manner in which the quest for a historic quadruple was ended by a combination of Tottenham Hotspur and VAR. Spurs survived a seven-goal thriller on Wednesday …
Read More »Can Notre-Dame be restored in just five years?
Paris, France | AFP | French President Emmanuel Macron has promised to complete a painstaking renovation of Notre-Dame within five years after the historic cathedral suffered a monstrous fire that destroyed its spire and roof. But will France be able to muster the necessary workers and materials to meet the challenge? …
Read More »Kane’s boyhood team-mate turns Chinese history-maker
Shanghai, China | AFP | Nico Yennaris was born in working-class east London, played with Harry Kane at Arsenal as a boy and is an England youth international. While Kane moved to Tottenham Hotspur and became England captain, Yennaris’s career has taken a very different direction, becoming the first naturalised player …
Read More »Fear of army action as Sudan protesters toughen stand
Khartoum, Sudan | AFP | Sudanese protesters Tuesday hardened their demand that the military men in power quickly step down and make way for civilian rule, refusing to budge from their sit-in outside army headquarters. The country’s new military ruler General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, in another apparent concession to the protesters, …
Read More »Loyal but fed up: South Africans’ patience with ANC running low
Alexandra/Welkom, South Africa | AFP | “In 1994 we voted for Nelson Mandela, then for Thabo Mbeki, then again for Jacob Zuma. But nothing has changed,” sighed Aubrey Kutlawano after attending an election rally by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Aged 42, Kutlawano has no job and lives in a …
Read More »Macron vows to rebuild a ‘more beautiful’ Notre-Dame in 5 years
Paris, France | AFP | President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday vowed to rebuild Notre-Dame cathedral “even more beautifully” within five years, as France reeled with shock from the fire that gutted the great Paris landmark. Macron announced the fast timescale — for a process some experts said would take decades — …
Read More »Guardiola in need of Tottenham turnaround
Manchester, United Kingdom | AFP | Manchester City remain in contention for a historic haul of four trophies this season, but winning the one by which Pep Guardiola’s time at the Etihad will be judged depends on overturning a 1-0 Champions League quarter-final, first leg deficit against Tottenham on Wednesday. …
Read More »New limbs, new life for South Sudan amputees
Juba, South Sudan | AFP | Stephen, 12, romps confidently around the sunlit courtyard, weaving in between wheelchair-bound patients as he plays with the other children, his prosthetic leg barely a hindrance. When he was five years old, the car he and his family were travelling in hit a landmine …
Read More »Years? Decades? Uncertainty over time needed to rebuild Notre-Dame
Paris, France | AFP | Rebuilding the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris could take decades after it was gutted by a fire, experts warned Monday, even as its most senior cleric expressed hope he could celebrate mass there within years. Parisians and people around the world watched in horror on Monday …
Read More »OIL: Ghost ships of Lagos, a haven of crime
Lagos, Nigeria | AFP | The two men in the motorised wooden canoe look around warily as they leave a towering shipwreck in the Lagos lagoon, with the barrels of oil on board barely concealed under rags. The rusting hulk of iron and peeling paint has been battered by the …
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