Everyone suspected Denmark and Sweden would finish with a 2-2 tie and knock Italy out. No one really believed it when it happened. Antonio Cassano went on a long run of celebration after scoring Italy’s winning goal three minutes into extra time against Bulgaria, convinced he had put the ailing Azzurri into the last eight of Euro 2004.
The top two chess players at the World Chess Championship have earned a place in round three that starts on Wednesday, but England’s Nigel Short was knocked out the night before in the biggest upset of the tournament so far. Short, world number 15 and number five in the tournament, drew in Tuesday’s second round-two game with his Polish opponent Michal Krasenkow
Backs Matt Giteau and Mark Gerrard were included on Wednesday in the Australian team for Saturday’s Rugby World Cup final rematch against England at Suncorp Stadium. In the only two changes from the side that beat Scotland 34-13 in Sydney last weekend, Giteau comes into the starting line-up at inside centre while Gerrard is included in a Wallabies squad for the first time on the bench.
David Beckham may have the glamor, the good looks and the globally recognised name, but it’s his teammate Wayne Rooney — stocky, unpolished, and 18 years old — who has the soccer world swooning. With four goals in three games, he is the top scorer at the European Championship, stealing the limelight normally focused on Beckham and earning perhaps premature comparisons in the British press to Brazilian legend Pele.
No one was sure what to call the links-styled course at Shinnecock Hills — or the competition it held — during a final round that identified the best players, humiliated the rest and set a US Open record for complaints. Five players shot 79 and still moved up the leaderboard.
The governor of New Jersey is challenging a move to grant a boxing licence to Mike Tyson. Governor James McGreevey said he would not allow Tyson to fight in state-owned venues. That would rule out some of the biggest facilities, like Meadowlands Arena and the Atlantic City Convention Centre.
The government has vowed to oppose a multi-billion dollar lawsuit lodged by apartheid victims against it and eight big corporations, but says it has received no official notification of the action. It was announced this week the R63-billion lawsuit was filed in the US for ”genocide, expropriation and other wrongful acts” by international companies under apartheid.
Two government officials who allegedly defrauded an estate of a deceased person were arrested on Tuesday by the Directorate of Special Operations (Scorpions) and the Special Investigations Unit, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said. The arrests took place in Mtubatuba and Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal.
The City of Cape Town for the second consecutive year has been named the number one long haul destination in the UK’s 2004 Trends and Spends Survey. The survey saw Cape Town beat off contender cities such as New York (second place), followed by Chicago, Boston, Miami, Dubai, Barbados and Las Vegas.
Nigeria’s largest cellphone company with about two-million subscribers, South African-owned MTN , has run dry of pre-paid scratch cards due to what officials describe as ”logistical problems”. Hundreds of thousands of angry subscribers have been left unable to replenish their accounts for the past five days.