India spinner Harbhajan Singh has been banned for the remainder of a domestic Twenty20 league after he was found guilty on Monday of slapping compatriot Shanthakumaran Sreesanth. Indian Premier League (IPL) commissioner Lalit Modi told a news conference that the cricketer would be fined all of his match fees from the tournament.
The United States military said on Monday it had killed 22 fighters who attacked an Iraqi checkpoint in north-eastern Baghdad under cover of an overnight dust storm. The attack was one of the biggest in weeks, and indicated some fighters had defied an order by Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to observe a ceasefire.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston usually plays host to the world’s leading scientists, Nobel laureates and technological pioneers. But at the weekend it was overrun by more than 500 self-professed ”internet geeks”. They were attending ROFLCon, a web symposium which attempted to answer conundrums such as why so many people like watching animated hamsters dance.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is taking large risks by investing more in private equity firms than it is allowed to and internal controls of such investments show ”serious weaknesses”, a media report said on Monday. The bank ”breached its capital allocation limit for private equity funds of 5%”, said the Financial Times, adding that it needed new risk management standards.
Two passenger trains collided in eastern China on Monday, killing at least 70 people and injuring hundreds as carriages derailed and toppled into a ditch, state media said. About 400 people were taken to hospital, with 70 in a critical condition, Xinhua news agency said.
He is French literature’s ageing enfant terrible, a nihilistic provocateur who has never been afraid of a blazing row — whether it is appearing in court for inciting racial hatred, irking feminists, or raging against the publishing world. But Michel Houellebecq could be about to face his most bruising public spat: with his mother.
Militants bombarded Baghdad’s Green Zone with rockets on Sunday, taking advantage of the cover of a blinding dust storm to launch one of the heaviest strikes in weeks on the fortified compound. The strikes appeared to defy a renewed call for a ceasefire by Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, which has seen many of his masked gunmen leave the streets of the Sadr City slum.
Springbok World Cup lock Bakkies Botha has called the Blue Bulls ”tyrannical and autocratic” in court papers presented to the Labour Court this week. Botha filed the court papers in a bid to have his contracts with SA Rugby and the Bulls be declared null and void.
Two men were injured when an unidentified man shot at them in a News Café on Rivonia Boulevard in Johannesburg on Sunday, paramedics said. ”A man was found lying on the floor by the door at News Café around 6pm. He had a gunshot wounds on both his legs, his head, chest and arm,” said spokesperson Werner Vermaak.
The United States’ top diplomat for Africa said on Sunday any national unity government in Zimbabwe should be headed by opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who Washington believes won a March 29 election. Election officials said they hoped to compile statistics from the presidential election by Monday for verification by the candidates.