A girl described as a 17-year-old weakling has beaten three robotic arms powered with plastic muscles in the first arm-wrestling competition of its kind, The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday. ”I was hoping we could have a win, but that didn’t happen,” said Yoseph Bar-Cohen, an expert on responsive plastics with the United States space agency.
South African companies are involved in dumping illegal weapons in conflict-ridden areas in Africa, an Amnesty International researcher said on Tuesday. ”In one recent example, an air-freight company operating from Johannesburg International airport helped fly several hundred tonnes of weapons into the Great Lakes region,” said Brian Wood, the organisation’s research manager.
Michael Jackson’s defence attorney sought on Tuesday to undermine the credibility of the younger brother of his accuser by presenting a Father’s Day card written by the now 14-year-old to the singer. ”When we get broken and shattered into tiny little pieces, you always heal us,” the boy wrote.
During the headier days of his 24 years as CBS news anchor, Dan Rather was called the ”voice of God” of American prime-time television. But when he makes his final send-off on Wednesday night, his exit will be rather less exalted. His departure is the result of a flawed report last September on United State President George Bush’s service in the Texas air national guard.
Aslan Maskhadov, the leader of the Chechen separatist movement, was killed on Tuesday during a raid by Russian special forces. In a well coordinated media operation, his corpse was shown on the Russian TV channel NTV lying in a pool of blood in the courtyard of the house in whose basement he had been hiding.
The Zimbabwean Attorney General has filed an appeal against the early release of 62 alleged South African mercenaries, South African Broadcasting Corporation radio news reported on Tuesday night. The Zimbabwean High Court last week reduced their sentences by four months, meaning that they could be released immediately.
Spare a thought for the humble tyre. Its entire working life is spent exposed to the elements, it gets dragged along the roughest of road surfaces with scant regard for its well-being, and it receives little, if any, tender loving care. Yet these rubber hoops are what keep our cars and our families safe on the road.
There is a global consensus on the importance of developing trade and the fact that only the World Trade Organisation (WTO), by realising the November 2001 Doha Development Agenda, can push through the development-friendly reforms that are urgently needed. World Trade Organisation secretary general Supachai Panitchpakdi argues that only the WTO can facilitate fair trade.
I wish it were possible to storm the gates of neo-liberal state power in this country, dominated by the ruling African National Congress, and declare a workers’ socialist republic. But I know with certainty that at least for the next decade there will be no such prospect. The ANC is still deeply rooted among the majority black working class and it will take a long time to uproot this support.
The South African government is to review finance allocations to public tertiary institutions across the country, with specific attention to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, according to the state news agency BuaNews. It said this is to provide opportunities for higher learning for poor young people.