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/ 17 October 2006
The holy grail of cricket, the coveted Ashes urn, arrived in Australia for only the second time in 123 years on Tuesday under tight security ahead of this year’s battle for its ownership. The symbol of cricketing enmity between England and Australia arrived in Sydney in a special carrying case, strapped into a business-class airline seat and handcuffed to the wrist of its curator.
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/ 17 October 2006
Zimbabwe is trying to persuade close ally China to help construct houses for more than a million people in need, a newspaper reported on Tuesday. Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo told the head of a visiting Chinese delegation that providing housing in Zimbabwe’s towns and cities was his government’s biggest challenge, reported the Herald daily.
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/ 17 October 2006
A Port Elizabeth man was expected to appear in the Uitenhage Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday following a hostage drama in Despatch, Eastern Cape police said. The man, in his 40s, allegedly locked a woman in his house at Azilia Park about 11am on Monday, said spokesperson Inspector Marianette Olivier. The man panicked when he saw police vehicles and neighbours gathering around the house and started shooting at bystanders.
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/ 17 October 2006
A train on Rome’s underground metro system rammed into the back of another at high speed on Tuesday, killing at least one person and injuring 110 others, five seriously, authorities said. Earlier, officials had said two people had been killed. The difference was apparently due to confusion at the scene.
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/ 17 October 2006
South Africa’s Presley Chweneyagae has won the award for an outstanding performance by an actor in a leading role for Tsotsi at the Black Movie Awards in Los Angeles, News24 reported on Monday. Chweneyagae was up against Denzel Washington (Inside Man), Cuba Gooding Junior (Shadowboxer), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Kinky Boots) and Tyrese Gibson (Waist Deep).
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/ 17 October 2006
Russia’s Vladimir Kramnik beat Bulgarian Veselin Topalov in a tie-break game on Friday to become the first world chess champion recognised by rival chess bodies for more than a decade, RIA news agency reported. Kramnik won the final tie-break game out of four to win the championship, being held in Russia in Elista, the capital of Kalmykia.
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/ 17 October 2006
Freddy Fender, the ”Bebop Kid” of the Texas-Mexico border who later turned his twangy tenor into the smash country ballad Before the Next Teardrop Falls, died on October 14. He was 69. Fender, who was diagnosed with lung cancer in early 2006, died at noon at his Corpus Christi home with his family at his bedside, said Ron Rogers, a family spokesperson.
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/ 17 October 2006
Lin Mu, regarded by Chinese liberal intellectuals as one of the nation’s pro-democracy pioneers, died suddenly at his home at the age of 79, his family said on Monday. His son said Lin, the former secretary of liberal Chinese leader Hu Yaobang, went for a nap on Sunday morning after reporting feeling unwell and never woke up.
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/ 17 October 2006
First National Bank (FNB) is conducting a massive R60-million upgrade of its ATMs, which will see customers perform the fastest ATM transactions in the country, and use of interactive graphics, which makes the ATMs even easier to use, minimising the chance of errors. All FNB ATMs will switch from fixed-line infrastructure to the much faster GPRS, 3G and HSDPA platforms provided by cellular group MTN.
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/ 17 October 2006
Ethiopia said on Tuesday that Eritrea’s deployment of troops and tanks to a demilitarised buffer zone along their border was just the latest in series of violations of a 2000 truce. Addis Ababa said it was ”carefully monitoring” the situation in the so-called Temporary Security Zone along the frontier.