Former world heavyweight champion Corrie Sanders’s return to the ring was not a memorable one as he laboured to a points decision over Brazilian Daniel Bispo at Emperors Palace near Johannesburg on Saturday night. The 41-year-old Sanders started well and battered Bispo from pillar to post with a stoppage looking inevitable.
Roger Federer has split from coach Tony Roche just two weeks before the world number one tennis player makes another attempt to win the only Grand Slam title eluding him, the French Open. The announcement to end the partnership after more than two years comes during Federer’s worst slump in years.
Cricket Australia wants to play Zimbabwe at a neutral venue after the government on Sunday barred the team from three one-day international games. Prime Minister John Howard announced the ban on the tour, saying it would be an ”enormous propaganda boost” for the regime of Robert Mugabe.
A lawyer for Nelson Mandela, Iqbal Meer, has stated that he is disappointed by a London’s judge ruling in which he [Meer] was accused of ”classic blind eye dishonesty.” London high court judge Peter Smith made the remark while ruling that two London law firms were involved in a conspiracy to launder part of -million ”plundered” by a former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba.
A car bomb near the office of a leading Kurdish party in northern Iraq killed 30 people and wounded 50 others on Sunday, police said. The blast took place near the local office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Makhmour, a town near the Kurdish city of Arbil, the capital of the autonomous region of Kurdistan.
Britain’s security service MI5 is keen to bring more women on board as it launches a new recruitment campaign this week — the latest stage in a drive to double its size. The domestic spy agency, around 1 800 strong at the time of the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, has swelled its ranks to more than 3 000.
Finishing with a hat-trick of birdies gave Sean O’Hair a six-under 66 and a one-shot lead over Phil Mickelson going into the final round of the Players Championship on Saturday. The centerpiece of his birdie-birdie-birdie end was his tee shot on the infamous island green 17th hole, which he thought was heading into the water.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has denied that Egypt had forgiven all Iraqi debts to Cairo in comments published in a newspaper on Sunday. Iraqi Finance Minister Bayan Jabor had told reporters at an international conference to pledge support for Iraqi institutions in early May that Egypt had agreed to waive Iraq’s -million debt.
Through wars, disasters and coups, foreign correspondent Kate Webb chronicled the turbulent birth of modern Asia, becoming a media legend who had the eerie experience of reading her own obituary. Webb, who died of cancer on May 13 at 64, covered many of Asia’s seminal events of the last four decades with a keen eye for the real story.
United States-led troops combed orchards and searched farms after seven American soldiers and an Iraqi army interpreter were ambushed on Saturday in an al-Qaeda bastion south of Baghdad, leaving five dead and three missing. The military said the patrol was attacked before dawn west of the town of Mahmudiya in the Sunni ”triangle of death”.