After taking a battering from world champions Australia over the past four months the South African cricket team barely have time to draw breath before taking on New Zealand in three Test matches. As the Australians departed South Africa for a series in Bangladesh, the New Zealanders arrived in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
Apple Computer unveiled software on Wednesday that enables its Mac computers with Intel processors to run rival Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system. Apple said that its software, called Boot Camp, was available for download starting on Wednesday, and that the application will be a feature in Leopard, the company’s next release of the Mac operating system.
United States internet search portal Yahoo! has teamed with Canada’s Research In Motion to make its services available on BlackBerry handheld devices, the companies announced on Wednesday. Yahoo! e-mail, searches and content will be available to BlackBerry users as a result of a "strategic global alliance", according to the companies.
A man was sentenced to three years’ probation on Wednesday for releasing an alligator into a Los Angeles lake, sparking a massive hunt for the elusive reptile, prosecutors said. The sentencing of one of two men charged in connection with unleashing the toothy beast came as the alligator, nicknamed Reggie, remained at large in the second largest United States city more than eight months.
Former West African warlord Charles Taylor received his first private visitors on Wednesday, exactly a week after he was arrested, as an international rights group said he must be treated humanely and given a fair trial for crimes against humanity.
Irish playwright Samuel Beckett was a man who weighed his words, a solitary, lonely figure obsessed by silence, whose works struggled to express the absurdity of life. One hundred years after his birth, his tragicomic plays stalked by a host of unforgettable, often grotesque, characters remain among the most important of 20th century theatre.
Hollywood will make a transcendent leap onto the internet on Tuesday when the Oscar-winning <i>Brokeback Mountain</i> becomes the first blockbuster available for permanent download on the same day its DVDs hit the shelves. Two competing download services announced on Monday they will offer downloads of such hit films as last year’s Oscar-nominated <i>King Kong</i> and <i>Memoirs of a Geisha</i>.
The Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, on Wednesday handed power to his deputy only hours after he promised to remain in charge until a new Parliament was formed. Thaksin told a cheering crowd outside his party headquarters that the first deputy prime minister and internal security minister, Chitchai Wannasathit, would take over until Parliament chose a permanent replacement.
Two Latin American countries are to stop sending troops for training to a controversial military academy in the United States. The move was welcomed by groups that have been campaigning against the academy since it was accused, in its previous incarnation, of training Latin American soldiers in illegal interrogation techniques.
Swiss teenagers sent to a centre for problem children based at a remote Spanish farmhouse were allegedly locked up in pig pens and kept on a diet of milk and muesli if they misbehaved, according to police. The case came to light after some of the children ran away and one was found at a nearby railway station.