No image available
/ 11 October 2006

Coach says red-hot Woods can get better

Tiger Woods has won six United States PGA Tour events in a row and is producing some of the best golf of his career, but coach Hank Haney says there is still room for improvement. Haney, who helped guide Woods through a swing change that has revitalised his game, said the world number one has been hitting his irons so accurately that his short game has been neglected.

No image available
/ 11 October 2006

Pink prison makes Texan inmates blush

For some, it may be a sign that prison life has become too cushy. For others, it represents the ultimate humiliation as the final shred of dignity is stripped away. At a county jail in Texas — maximum capacity four males and one female — inmates are dressed in pink jumpsuits. They sleep on pink sheets and wear pink slippers. Even the walls and the bars of the cells are painted pink.

No image available
/ 11 October 2006

Madonna adopts Malawian child, says father

Pop star Madonna has adopted a one-year-old African boy, his father claimed, saying he was happy his son would escape a life of poverty in Malawi, British tabloid newspapers reported on Wednesday. The Sun splashed a picture of the singer dressed in a safari hat and smiling, with a young child it said she had chosen at an orphanage strapped to her back.

No image available
/ 11 October 2006

UN divided over nuclear sanctions

United Nations Security Council members were split on Tuesday over the sanctions to be imposed against North Korea in response to its claimed nuclear weapons test. The five permanent Security Council members held meetings to discuss how to force North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

No image available
/ 11 October 2006

Madagascan police fire tear gas on opposition crowd

Madagascan police fired tear gas to break up an opposition rally and arrested six people on Tuesday as the party’s exiled leader vowed to return to the Indian Ocean island to run in upcoming elections. Officials in the eastern city of Toamasina said security forces were compelled to act when members of the Arema party left a compound where they were holding their annual convention.

No image available
/ 11 October 2006

Cultural clashes

When entering Potchefstroom, on your way to Aardklop, one of South Africa’s biggest arts festivals, the concentration camp into which Afrikaans women and children were herded during the South African Anglo-Boer War is largely hidden from view. Cars speed past the gravesites without a glance, their mostly white, Afrikaans-speaking occupants intently focused on arriving on time for their favourite "shows".

No image available
/ 11 October 2006

SA languages: One keyboard fits all

A new keyboard has been developed that will allow typing in all 11 official languages in South Africa, said Dwayne Bailey this week, director of <i><a href="http://www.translate.org.za/" target="_blank" class="standardtext">translate.org.za</a></i>, a non-governmental organisation focused on the localisation of open-source software into all 11 official languages. The keyboard will allow a person to type all characters needed by the Venda, Northern Sotho, Tswana and Afrikaans languages.

No image available
/ 10 October 2006

Rescuers call off search for missing miner

Rescuers lugged heavy equipment underground for kilometres, abseiled, waded through flooded tunnels and finally gave up searching on Tuesday for a man who fell in an abandoned mine near Barberton. ”We went through hell the last three or four days,” said Inspector Danie Theron, of the White River police search-and-rescue unit.