Britain’s Greg Rusedski, Germany’s Nicolas Kiefer and Cyril Saulnier of France advanced to the quarterfinals of the Mercedes-Benz Cup on Wednesday. Rusedski ran his winning streak to seven matches with a 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (2) victory over Karol Beck of Slovakia.
Seven seconds. That may not seem much. But in the three-week Tour de France, the advantage Lance Armstrong gained over two rivals on Wednesday by sprinting at the finish of the first mountain stage could be an important step toward the Texan’s hoped-for record sixth crown.
Hell hath no fury like a Mugabe minion maddened, judging by an official outburst in Zimbabwe’s government-owned media last weekend. In his vituperative column in the Herald newspaper, columnist ”Nathaniel Manheru” was in a particularly unforgiving mood about outgoing Zimbabwe Independent editor Iden Wetherell, whose paper has been an unrelenting critic of Robert Mugabe’s regime.
Godfrey Khotso Mokoena, South African junior long- and triple-jump record holder, became South Africa’s first medal winner of the 10th IAAF World Junior Athletics Championships in Italy on Wednesday when he finished second in the long jump with an excellent new South African junior record distance of 8,09m.
he International Cricket Council (ICC) confirmed on Wednesday that it has proposed a dispute-resolution process to the Zimbabwe Cricket Union and the Zimbabwean players that will see that current dispute in that country quickly resolved in Zimbabwe by Zimbabweans.
Free State and KwaZulu-Natal were the big winners on the third day of the Coca-Cola Craven Week in Nelspruit on Wednesday. Free State beat the hosts, the Pumas, 21-10 in the final game of the day, while the Young Sharks were too strong for the Griffons, beating them 45-14 in an earlier game.
British Airways (BA) is to increase its London-to-Cape Town schedule by an additional two flights a week this summer to offer a total of 12 weekly services to the Mother City. The additional flights will boost much sought-after capacity on the popular route by almost 12 000 seats over the peak summer period.
Border police in Benin have rescued 27 children from traffickers after they attempted to croos the border into neighbouring Togo. Four adults were arrested in what a police officer described as a new war against child smuggling. Most trafficked children are put to work in cocoa or sugar plantations.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, jailed owner of embattled oil giant Yukos, on Wednesday asked shareholders to remove Viktor Gerashchenko, recently appointed in an attempt to end the firm’s ongoing feud with the state. Gerashchenko’s efforts to end the deadlock in negotiations with Moscow have been largely ineffectual.
The Freedom Front Plus has called for a national debate on the future of affirmative action in South Africa. The party says that studies carried out in other parts of the world show that quotas based along racial lines do not work, and that an alternative must be sought and implemented.