Carlsberg Cup action will return next week with quarterfinals to be played as the competition draws to an end.

President Joyce Banda on Sunday, speaking at a church service in Balaka, emptied her chest on the media, claiming that two unnamed radio stations and two unspecified newspapers were spreading confusing messages on the state of the Malawi economy.

The Times Group's THOM KHANJE was among international journalists covering the 2012 World Bank and International Monetary Fund Annual Meetings in Tokyo, Japan and he analyses the relevance of the meetings to Malawi:

It is general knowledge that strikes have been the order of the day in the recent days forcing customers, the so called kings, to start begging because they have been denied the much needed services and products by organisations which supply the same.

BEFORE we start thinking of how we can, together as a nation, find some means to bail out this country from the economic hell that it has found itself, we must first uproot the rot that haunts us.

As the economy grows, the financial services sector plays a crucial role. The banking services industry in the country is flourishing with greater profits as noticed through the published accounts. But though the banking sector is profitable, is it as a result of superior customer service delivery or out of capitalisation on the fact that people have no choice but to use the banks?

SEASON and time are twin ruffians, who, at their fancy, find us convenient objects of play forever juggling our circumstances. One moment they send us into a trance of forgetfulness and the next violently jerk us back to the sad reality of the changes that have abruptly taken place.

AND they say, see what, Malawians are a bunch of ingrates with a DNA of remonstrating against everything that a sitting President does however good or bad, don't they know to err is human?

BECAUSE I believe that what cannot be talked about can also not be put to rest; and if it is not, the wounds continue to fester from generation to generation, I always recall a tale I was told sometime back.

FAST ends May and in comes June, the harbinger of July the D- month of the Al- Bashir tug-of-war.

THEY peddled lies that the July 20 demonstrations were about supporting same sex marriages and this is why people went into the streets. To imagine that they are now in opposition and still peddling more lies in order to defend the bad laws they enacted is unbelievable. I hope they stay in opposition forever.

When Malawi's independence from Britain was announced on July 6 1964, the British flag, known as the Union Jack, was pulled down and that of the new nation was raised.

IT was in February during the season of the green grass. The nation was still staggering under the weight of a root that failed which government christened the Zero Deficit Budget.

To arrest or not arrest Al Bashir, is not the only essence of the question, there is a third question to be answered. Do we really need to undergo all the pain, known and unknown at the moment, just for the glory of being in the limelight for two weeks?

Death will never be timely. Even Methuselah, that patriarch who evaded the sharp fangs of death for nearly a millennium until he met death at 969 years, can be said to have had an untimely death, and so sudden.

Death will never be timely. Even Methuselah, that patriarch who evaded the sharp fangs of death for nearly a millennium until he met death at 969 years, can be said to have had an untimely death, and so sudden.

The sudden death of Malawi's third president, Prof. Bingu Mutharika caught the whole country by surprise.

Bad, crooked, dishonest and corrupt politicians have done a lot of damage to the standing of politics and politicians. The standing of our politicians today is generally very low. And probably that's why we hear of sayings like 'politics is a dirty game'. But why should politics be a dirty game when the destinies of whole nations are dependent on it?

Dear Joyce,

I know you are in an ambivalent mood of joy and sorrow.

At the graduation of teachers at Domasi College in Zomba recently, State President Bingu wa Mutharika expressed his concern over the delay in the opening of the long awaited Malawi University of Science & Technology (MUST) which was scheduled to open this coming October, but this won't happen due to the delay in water connection to the institution.