”Good golly, it’s Ollie,” exclaimed one excited Stormers supporter on arrival at Monday’s training session in Durbanville. There he was, Ollie le Roux, the 128kg prop who had finally appeared after much speculation in the past week that he would be joining the Stormers. ”He’s been running like a spring chicken,” said Frikkie Erasmus, the Stormers media manager.
Sir Alex Ferguson believes his young Manchester United stars will become Old Trafford legends if they win the Champions League. Ferguson’s side retained the Premier League title on Sunday and now the Scot has turned his attention to the Champions League final against Chelsea, the team they edged out of the title.
Argentina’s Damian Marchiano is reputed to be one of the toughest bantamweights around. And come May 31 at Emperors Palace, fans will learn just how tough when he challenges Silence Mabuza for the latter’s IBO bantamweight title. Not that the diminutive Mabuza is too worried about his latest challenger, having had his eyes firmly set on a unification bout later this year.
West Indies batsman Marlon Samuels has been found guilty of breaching regulations after a probe into allegations of links with a bookmaker, the West Indies Cricket Board said on Monday. Samuels (27) could now face a two-year ban from the game if the International Cricket Council enforces a mandatory ban.
Record oil prices and a slowdown in advanced economies are set to curb global oil demand despite growth in China and the Middle East, the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecast on Tuesday, saying stockpiling was a key factor. Demand from emerging economies might be set back if and when governments decide that fuel subsidies are unsustainable, the IEA said.
Teenage smokers in Japan could soon be taking their last illicit puffs thanks to the introduction of cigarette-vending machines that can spot underage customers just by looking at them. The machines are equipped with a digital camera that can compare users’ facial characteristics with a database of more than 100 000 people.
A man was shot dead and another injured when violence flared up in Alexandra on Monday evening, bringing the death toll in suspected xenophobic attacks to three, police said on Tuesday. Constable Neria Malefetse said a total of 39 people were arrested in the Johannesburg township on Monday evening.
The field is planted with shoulder-high rows of corn and is so close to Israel that the tall concrete boundary wall is well within sight, along with the Israeli military jeeps on their regular patrols into northern Gaza. For Abid Razzaq Ouda (40), who farms this land, this brings its own complications.
Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have agreed to re-mark their common border, increasingly the subject of dispute since oil prospecting began on Lake Albert last year. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and his Congolese counterpart, Joseph Kabila, met in Tanzanian city Dar es Salaam over the weekend to defuse tensions.
Burma’s military regime on Tuesday thanked the United States for a plane-load of aid but said it still was opposed to letting in foreign aid workers to cope with the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. Burma Vice-Admiral Soe Thein said the needs of hundreds of thousands of storm survivors ”have been fulfilled to an extent”.