Australia flanker George Smith has reacted angrily to suggestions South African players are offering each other rewards for pulling out his dreadlocks during their Tri-Nations clash this weekend. The Sydney Morning Herald asked Smith about Joe van Niekerk’s comments that a colleague offered ” to the man who came off the field with one of Smith’s dreadlocks” during a 2004 Test.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s future with Manchester United was still up in the air on Thursday, despite the club insisting he was not for sale. The Portuguese winger has retracted slightly from his claim that he would be moving away from Old Trafford after the rumpus surrounding his role in the World Cup sending off of Wayne Rooney.
Retired France captain Zinedine Zidane can do no wrong, according to his peers in the football world following his public apology on television for headbutting Italy’s Marco Materazzi. The 34-year-old great went on Canal+ and then TF1 TV stations in France to apologise to the world for losing his temper over jibes from the Italian centre-back in the World Cup final on Sunday.
A leading Zimbabwean rights group on Thursday demanded the "immediate release" of 220 protesters arrested across the country as they marched to press for a new Constitution. "Lawyers will be seeking the immediate release of the activists because they are being held by police illegally," Ernest Mudzengi, a senior official of the National Constitutional Assembly, said.
More than 100 volunteers have come to the aid of a stricken wild elephant who has been stuck in mud for a week in eastern Thailand, local officials said on Thursday. The elderly pachyderm, called Plai Khun Song, was unable to stand up after he took a rest in a mud hole in a sanctuary in Chanthaburi province, 245km east of Bangkok, district chief Viwat Chantanurak said.
Chinese officials have expressed concern that the media furore surrounding world record hurdler Liu Xiang could harm his career, state media reported on Thursday. They quoted athletics official Yu Weili as calling for more privacy for Liu, who set a new world record in the 110m hurdles with a time of 12,88 seconds in Lausanne on Tuesday.
The implementation of a large-scale anti-retroviral treatment (ART) programme will not only extend the lives of HIV-positive South Africans, but will also significantly reduce the adverse economic consequences of the HIV/Aids epidemic. This is according to an in-depth study of the macro-economic impact of HIV and Aids in South Africa under alternative treatment scenarios.
Eurotunnel was to "place itself under the protection of the Paris tribunal of commerce" after the failure of negotiations on its debt with its creditors. Subordinate creditors headed by Deutsche Bank "rejected the last effort to reach a consensual agreement with all the Eurotunnel creditors," said a spokesperson.
The aerospace industry will be in sharp focus next week when one of its biggest shows opens near London amid a crisis at the European group Airbus that has helped boost the standing of United States rival Boeing. The Farnborough International Airshow comes as Airbus is caught in a storm of bad publicity after revealing production problems in June.
Microsoft on Wednesday was calling on users of its Windows and Office 2000 software to install security patches that prevent hackers from taking over their computers. The Redmond, Washington, software giant also made available monthly installments engineered to remove malware.