Le Journal

While the famous penalty technique is the ultimate act of showmanship, the cost of failure is too high to justifyBeing too smart for your own good is usually drummed out of children before they leave school but sometimes people cannot help themselves. The Panenka penalty, successfully executed, offers the limited benefit of making a goalkeeper look silly and the taker a genius but Brahim Díaz is the latest to learn the cost of what happens when it goes wrong.Díaz was given 15 minutes to consider what to do with his spot-kick after the ludicrous levels of drama in the Africa Cup of Nations final. Maybe this was his undoing: being able to ponder every option, from the rudimentary to the artistic, until deciding to replicate Antonin Panenka’s creation with what could, and should, have been the last kick of the tournament. Continue reading...

Shortage raises rates of maternity intervention, while improving access to care could potentially save 4.3m lives a year, say expertsA global shortage of nearly a million midwives is leaving pregnant women without the basic care needed to prevent harm, including the deaths of mothers and babies, according to new research.Almost half the shortage was in Africa, where nine in 10 women lived in a country without enough midwives, the researchers said. Continue reading...