Vying to Determine Iraq's Fate - 2004-01-25
The United States is engaged in what one official here calls "a poker game bluff" over Iraq with that country's chief cleric.

Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is a gaunt 75-year-old who never leaves his house in the holy city of Najaf and will not meet U.S. officials or journalists. Al-Sistani, who is demanding elections to form the Iraqi government to which Washington has promised to transfer power, might not even be eligible to vote in those elections. He is Iranian, though he has lived in Iraq for 52 years.

But the reportedly fragile cleric, considered a moderate by all parties, may still hold the stronger hand in the high-stakes game of Iraq.
Read the full story at Newsday

Double Jeopardy - 2004-01-25
The stakes have been raised once more in the titanic poker staredown between Sir Alex Ferguson and John Magnier, manager and largest shareholder
respectively in the biggest club in the world.

What began as an informal arrangement between a football man dabbling in breeding and breeder dabbling in football has escalated into a bitter dispute which, the Sunday Herald can reveal, may jeopardise the future of Manchester United’s biggest asset, striker Ruud Van Nistelrooy.

The Dutchman’s future at the club is now in question should Sir Alex be somehow forced out of the manager’s job.
Read the full story at Sunday Herald