Referee Paul Honiss hit back at Jake White on Sunday after the Springbok’s coach laid part of the blame for South Africa’s 49-0 Tri-Nations rugby loss to Australia at the feet of the New Zealand official. White said Honiss had allowed the Wallabies to ”get away with murder” in Saturday’s Suncorp Stadium match in which the Boks slumped to their heaviest loss to Australia.
Juventus, Lazio and Fiorentina reacted with fury on Friday after they were all relegated from Italian football’s top-division and banned from Europe for their part in the country’s match-fixing scandal. Juventus were also deducted 30 points from their total for next season and stripped of their last two league titles.
It worked for David as he squared up to Goliath, and now scientists hope a slingshot will help save the planet. Scientists at the French space agency, CNES, have calculated how to capture an asteroid and manoeuvre it into a near-Earth orbit, from where it can be flung into the path of a larger asteroid that threatens to collide with Earth.
The South African Trade and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) on Friday accused Fidelity Springbok Security Services of discriminating against its members. Spokesperson Ronnie Mamba said in a statement on Friday that Fidelity ”continues to target Satawu members for abuse, intimidation and victimisation”.
Gauteng’s school-bus transport saga is over, the provincial education department said on Friday. Education provincial minister Angie Motshekga said that misunderstandings about the payment of bus operators had been handled at an urgent meeting in the morning.
Ukrainian Yaroslav Popovych of the Discovery Channel team won the 12th stage of the Tour de France on Friday to deprive the hosts of a coveted victory on Bastille Day. American Floyd Landis retained the race leader’s yellow jersey ahead of Saturday’s 13th stage, at 230km the longest of the race, between Beziers and Montelimar.
Somalia’s transitional president on Friday ruled out talks with Islamists in control of the capital, claiming they had broken an earlier agreement and planned to seize more territory. The two sides had been due to meet in Sudan on Saturday for a second round of talks aimed at resolving differences.
The United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting on Lebanon in New York on Friday, with Beirut demanding support for an immediate end to the daily Israeli air strikes on its territory. The debate began just hours after Israeli forces bombarded the command headquarters of Hezbollah in Beirut.
Ralph Ginzburg, a scandalous editor and publisher of Eros, the magazine ”of sexual candour”, who was convicted in the 1960s for sending it through the mail, has died of cancer, media reports said on Friday. Ginzburg died on Thursday at the age of 76 in New York.
Wage negotiations between the National Petroleum Employers’ Association (NPEA) and the trade union Solidarity have deadlocked, NPEA spokesperson Alfie Ngubo said in a statement. ”Although the NPEA made a settlement offer of a 6,5% wage increase on basic wages, … they were unfortunately not able to resolve the dispute,” he said.