Disgraced former Wallaby Wendell Sailor will sign for Australian rugby league side St George Illawarra when his ban for drug use expires, it was reported Wednesday. The 32-year-old tested positive for cocaine after playing for the NSW Waratahs in a Super 14 match against the ACT Brumbies in April last year.
Last year was one of the worst on record for refugees and the crisis is deepening in 2007 thanks to conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan’s Darfur region. But the accelerating return of refugees to their homes in south Sudan in 2007 — some after more than two decades — is one bright spot in the otherwise bad year.
A strike in Africa’s top oil producer began on Wednesday after unions rejected government concessions on fuel prices as too little too late. The offices of Western oil companies operating in Nigeria were closed along with most other businesses, but oil production and exports were uninterrupted, company officials said.
Thousands of Eritreans marched through the streets on Wednesday to a cemetery atop a hill overlooking the capital to honour tens of thousands of people killed in two wars against their former Ethiopian masters. Some holding orange flowers, Eritreans bowed their heads in silence to celebrate an estimated 90 000 people killed in a 30-year independence struggle.
A Beijing hospital is preparing to treat injuries that might occur if next year’s Olympics are hit with a ”terrorist nuclear attack,” the state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday. Beijing municipal officials said a drill would be held next month to test readiness to handle a dirty bomb attack.
Kimberley will soon get its sparkle back when the State Diamond Trader (SDT) is established in the Northern Cape city. PW Saaiman, provincial minister for economic affairs, said on Wednesday the establishment of the SDT should have many developmental spin-offs for the city.
The electronic National Transport Information System (eNatis) is operating well countrywide, the National Road Public Management Corporation said on Wednesday. The corporation manages eNatis on behalf of the Transport Department.
In the spacious, top-floor office of Gaza’s former police chief, the television was tuned to al-Aqsa TV, the Hamas channel, and at lunchtime half a dozen well-armed, bearded Hamas commanders rose in unison and knelt in prayer. On the streets there were no policemen to be seen.
United States and Iraqi forces killed at least 30 al-Qaeda militants and found numerous weapons during the first day of an offensive against the Sunni Islamist group north of Baghdad, the US military said on Wednesday. The military said a missile strike destroyed a weapons cache inside a known al-Qaeda safe house.
Records from the trial of Nelson Mandela, a medieval French tapestry, a millennium-old Iranian epic and the Hollywood movie The Wizard of Oz are among 38 new items on a Unesco cultural heritage list, the body said on Tuesday.