Being a manager in the English Premier League is hard. With the huge amounts of money at the top of the table and the threat of relegation to the lower leagues at the bottom, it is almost impossible to stay a manager in England’s soccer top flight for too long—unless you’re a certified footballing genius.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. may be about to fight Manny Pacquaio in what is set to be the biggest fight of all time but naysayers dismiss these super-fights as one-offs that won’t fend off the challenge of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which is winning over the hearts of fight fans.
Ahead of Monday’s meeting of euro zone finance ministers, Greece has submitted its latest proposals for reform (paywall) to get money from the creditors that control its bailout. One proposal in particular jumps out: Hiring tourists to get wired up and spy on locals for tax avoidance.
The Musashi is one of the one of the biggest warships ever constructed, built by the Japanese Imperial Navy in 1942 at the height of World War II. It was sunk by the US Navy in 1944 (paywall) and been lost ever since, until now.
English soccer suffers from a conundrum: How can the Premier League be so good and the national team be so bad?
The UK Independence Party wants to get Britain out of the European Union, strengthen control of the country’s borders, and keep those pesky foreigners out.
It’s time for a paradigm shift in our understanding of culture. At a time when so many businesspeople live and work in multiple cultures, categorizing people based on their passport or birthplace just doesn’t ring true.
In 2006, Pluto lost its status as a planet. It was downgraded to a “dwarf planet,” in fact, a decision that rankled many who had grown accustomed to the solar system containing nine celestial bodies—including Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang Theory:
The French like to invest their savings in life insurance, and Max-Hervé George’s father probably thought he was being wise by buying his son a policy, worth 50,000 francs (now roughly €8,000), when he was seven years old. Little did he realize just how wise that decision was.
Cricket is a slow, sedate affair. Matches between the 18 counties in England that maintain ancient enmities despite only being a few miles apart, last for four days and attract an increasingly gray-haired audience. Ten of the 18 teams in England’s County Championship lose money. Many fear for the future of a game that goes back to 1890—and probably much earlier.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. has now confirmed what boxing fans have been waiting to hear for five years: the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world will take on Manny Pacquiao in May in what is expected to be the richest fight in the sport’s history.
The French government thought it had reached a solution to reviving its moribund economy with la loi Macron.
The players at Bayern Munich, one of the best soccer teams in the world, are modern athletes, used to traveling great distances in the quest to new reach audiences. But many will be experiencing a first today—playing in a war zone.
Two attacks in Copenhagen—one at a free-speech debate and another at the city’s biggest synagogue—have left one dead and three injured. The gunman behind both was later killed by police.
On Friday, president Barack Obama went to the heart of Silicon Valley to a cyber-security summit organized by the White House to warn tech leaders that they should share more information with the government to thwart attacks like the hack against Sony.
Usain Bolt, the fastest man alive, has announced that he will retire in London at 2017. His initial plan was to retire after the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro next year, but the money from Puma was too much to resist. “My sponsor has asked me to go on for another year, to 2017 and London,” where he will compete in the 100 meters at the World Championships, Bolt told the Daily Mail.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund and once touted as the future leader of France, is on trial for “aggravated pimping” in northern France. It is alleged that he and 13 others helped run a prostitution ring from the Carlton hotel.
Last September, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, at the very heart of the game since 1754, decided to allow women to join the club for the first time in its 260-year history. More than 85% of its 2,400 members voted for its change.
In the 1960s, Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, wanted Cary Grant to play the role of the suave British spy in the films of his books. Instead, he got a Scottish, tattooed former bodybuilder. “What was it he called me, or told somebody? That I was an over-developed stunt man,” Sean Connery reminisced. “When I did eventually meet him he was very interesting, erudite and a snob—a real snob.”
Starting a magazine or newspaper is hard. Many launch but many also fail amid a tough advertising environment and the tricky shift from print to digital (paywall).
In recent months, a street movement called Pegida—Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident—has emerged from nowhere in Germany, seeking to “protect Judeo-Christian culture” and halt to what it calls the spread of Islam. Though it denies being xenophobic or racist, its leader quit after being pictured dressed as Hitler. Pegida’s rallies have attracted tens of thousands of people in Germany.
The biggest Hollywood studios recently reached a deal with Kodak to continue to supply them with film stock for at least for “a few” more years to make their movies. That is quite an investment on both sides—Kodak says it costs $50 million a year to keep manufacturing film—and a big turnaround for an industry that has spent the better part of the last decade pushing digital and sounding the death knell for film.
The latest Michelin guide to the best restaurants in France comes out on Friday (Feb. 6), but the results were announced earlier this week: there are now 26 three-star, 80 two-star and more than 500 one-star restaurants in the country.
Since Greece’s Syriza party came to power, things have been tense in the euro zone. The party’s anti-austerity, anti-bail-out platform has put it on a collision course with its benefactors, especially Germany, which has footed a big chunk of the bill to keep the single currency together.
