Japan is being lined up as a Bledisloe Cup host in 2009 and could become the base for a new team in an expanded Super 14 competition. The Australian Rugby Union (ARU) said initial talks with Japanese officials about bringing the Wallabies and New Zealand All Blacks to Asia’s top rugby nation had gone smoothly.
Hillary Clinton won a critical showdown with Barack Obama in Ohio on Tuesday to breathe new life into her campaign and extend the Democratic presidential race, while John McCain clinched the Republican nomination and looked ahead to the November election.
Newspaper columnist Jon Qwelane on Wednesday at a public forum organised by the South African Human Rights Commission refused to apologise for calling a former colleague a ”coconut” for objecting to a recent, blacks-only Forum of Black Journalists event. The forum discussion was frank and at times heated.
Security guard Richard Engelbrecht was on Wednesday given two life sentences — one for the rape of Mitchells Plain schoolgirl Annestacia Wiese and the second for murdering her by strangulation. He was also sentenced to ten years imprisonment for indecently assaulting his three-year-old stepdaughter two years previously.
The council of the University of the Free State must ”go” because they do not want to transform, the African National Congress chairperson in the province, Ace Magashule, said on Tuesday. ”I cannot agree with those people who want to say everything at the University of the Free State was still fine,” Magashule said.
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A German man was released unharmed late on Tuesday in the Niger Delta in Nigeria, about 12 hours after he was seized by unknown gunmen who killed a driver and two soldiers, a source at his company said on Wednesday. The source at Julius Berger, a German-Nigerian construction group, said no ransom was paid for the German hostage.
Australia all-rounder Andrew Symonds will face no action after he knocked over a streaker in his side’s nine-run one-day international loss to India in Brisbane on Tuesday. Robert Murray David Ogilvie stormed the field and ran towards Symonds, who shoulder-charged him to the ground.
Actor and popular Soweto pub owner Shimmy Mofokeng was shot dead by hijackers while approaching his driveway in Leonard Lane in Mulbarton, Johannesburg police said on Wednesday. Spokesperson Captain Julia Claassen said Mofokeng (53) was shot in his upper body as he was about to drive into his yard in his white Kia kombi on Monday.
South Africa’s Standard Bank Group said on Wednesday full-year headline earnings per share rose 23,4% to R1 033,4 cents, but it warned it would take a short-term hit from its deal to sell a 20% stake to China’s biggest lender ICBC. Africa’s biggest bank by assets said normalised headline earnings per share rose 20,6%, and normalised return on equity was 24,8%.
The Israelites may have been high on a hallucinogenic plant when Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, according to a study by an Israeli psychology professor. Benny Shanon said two plants in the Sinai desert contain the same psychoactive molecules as those found in plants from which the Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.