Infozone Breaking World News

The foreign office minister for Asia, Africa and the United Nations is to leave the government at the end of this month.  In a statement the minister said that it was never his intention to “do the job forever”.

Also, the Minister indicated that the decision came about because of personal and family reasons and that his resignation was not motivated by a political situation.

Downing Street has made no comments so far on any potential replacement for the foreign office minister and it is thought that any immediate announcement is unlikely at this stage. Lord Malloch Brown has said that he still greatly admires what the prime minister is doing and that he would continue to support the government.

When stepping down from his post as the foreign office minister Lord Malloch Brown said that his entrance to the government was “as a professional and not a politician”.

The Foreign office minister also stated that he thought it was a privilege to work with such people as David Miliband and Gordon Brown. 

The foreign minister was a member of the prime ministers Government of All the Talents which was aptly named “goats” by commentators. (People who are not political but have been utilised by the government for their areas of expertise in certain policy areas)

Gordon Brown has tried to maintain the goat policy; this is evident when he hired the former M&S chairman Paul Myners to take the role of city minister. Mervyn Davies (former bank boss) was also brought in to replace Lord Jones.

Many who have won tickets through a lottery to the Michael Jackson Memorial service are trying to sell them through online auctions such as EBay. EBay told the BBC that they would not permit listings of the Jackson Memorial tickets on their site.  EBay has stated that they would try to remove any listings as soon as they appeared and think that such sales are “inappropriate”.

Some auctions for the tickets have already attracted offers of as much as £15,000 before being pulled by EBay. Fans that continually support Jackson have been outraged by the sale of the tickets online and have bid up the tickets to high level sums such as £62m.

Craigslist has also being targeted for ticket sales and advertisements were soon highlighted by users for removal.

The estimation is that over 1.6 million people made an application to the online lottery for the Michael Jackson Memorial Service which is taking place in the Staples Centre based in Los Angeles. Organisers of the Jackson event (AEG Live) put 17,500 free tickets online via email and people had until 6pm last night to pick up the passes.

The Jackson Memorial will be streamed live by the BBC in the UK and on the 5 main US television networks. The timing for the event is 10am Pacific Coast time and could be one of the largest events in Internet history.  Google news has already seen such huge numbers of enquiries about the Jackson Memorial Service at one point it thought it was under attack.

The top three US car manufacturers saw vehicle sales drop again in June, with General Motors reporting a 33.6% drop and Chrysler’s sales falling 42% from the previous year, but there was some stabilisation in the car market as Ford posted its smallest drop in a year at 10.7%.

Ford is the only car manufacturer not to have filed for bankruptcy during the economic crisis, with Chrysler filing for bankruptcy protection in April and General Motors joining them in June. Chrysler have subsequently emerged from its bankruptcy protection after Italian car manufacturer Fiat bought its top assets, but GM has been told that its financial support will be pulled if it does not get permission to sell its strongest assets by July the 10th.

General Motors is looking for court approval to sell its assets to a new company, which the US government will be the majority stake holder, but the deal has been opposed by GM’s bondholders, who do not want to sell.

US vehicle sales continue to drop despite large discounts being offered to car buyers. Analysts estimate that sales will increase over the next couple of months as the US introduces their ‘cash for clunkers’ scheme, which it hopes to encourage customers to trade in their old cars for newer models. Similar schemes have already been introduced in Germany and the UK.