Welcome to My Sweet Gossip Blog

FIFA announced on the 27th of April that it would allow each team make use of a maximum of 5 substitutions within a 90 minutes match and an additional one substitution if a match goes into extra time for knockout competitions. The new rule will take effect as soon as competitions restart following the forced break in football activities around the world since the corona virus pandemic began. The governing body sited safety of players as the key reason behind the proposed change. Once football returns it is anticipated that fixtures will come thick and fast, the new rule will help prevent player injury due to fixture conjestion. This represents an increase from the normal 3 substitutions afforded each team previously. The governing body also stated that the organisers of different competitions can decide to make use of the proposed rule or not. The debate that has been going round is on how this rule change affects different teams. Does it make the bigger teams in the l...

A subway rider wears a mask and a bandana to protect himself against COVID-19 in New York on April 7, 2020 [AP/Bebeto Matthews] History has shown us that the consequences of contagion are not equally felt by all communities. Almost 100 years ago, a 1926 syphilis survey conducted in the US state of Alabama showed that 36 percent of the people in Macon County had syphilis. Only 60 years after the legal abolition of slavery, Black Americans made up the majority of that county, barely keeping a living through sharecropping. In 1932, the county was  chosen  to become a living laboratory in which for the next few decades, Black men would be tested and examined to track the development of syphilis. The study was led by what was then known as the Tuskegee Institute, which recruited hundreds of residents, misleading them that they were receiving treatment. In the late 1940s, effective treatments became available for the disease, but the unwilling participants ...