The All Blacks may have won their past five matches against the Wallabies but they have a healthy respect for the improving side ahead of their Bledisloe Cup/Tri-Nations clash on Saturday. The All Blacks won on their past two visits to Australia, winning 13-9 in Brisbane last year and 30-13 in Sydney in 2005.
With a contingent of supporters from the adjoining Chinatown shopping complex designed to make them feel at home, holders China delivered the goods and generally held the upper hand in a frost-bitten goalless draw against South Africa when the eight nation under-23 soccer tournament got under way at the Johannesburg Stadium on Wednesday afternoon.
Tony Blair is to make his first working visit to Ramallah in the West Bank next month as envoy of the quartet of Middle East peacemakers, it emerged on Wednesday, after his job was confirmed amid scepticism about any chance of his success.
South African Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni says the higher-than-expected CPIX (consumer inflation less mortgage costs) at 6,4% year-on-year in May — released on Wednesday morning — would "spoil the party further". He indicated in a speech on Wednesday evening that when interest rates were low, many people went on spending sprees.
Trade unions are expected to finalise their consultations on the future of the public-service strike on Thursday. The unions caucused on Wednesday night at the Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council in Centurion, south of Pretoria. Several unions attending that meeting said they were ready to suspend the strike.
Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi said on Wednesday his plan for a United States of Africa should include creating a two million-strong army to staunch recurrent conflicts that have ravaged many of the continent’s nations. Gaddafi was addressing hundreds of youths in Côte d’Ivoire’s economic capital, Abidjan.
The opening match and final of the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa will take place at the Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg. Fifa’s executive committee said on Wednesday the decision was made on Tuesday by the bureau of the World Cup Organising Committee.
South African Nobel peace prize laureate Desmond Tutu said on Wednesday Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe needed face-saving options for there to be a chance of him stepping aside. Tutu said the replacement of Tony Blair by Gordon Brown as prime minister of Britain, Zimbabwe’s former colonial ruler, could help the situation.
Delegates to the African National Congress’s (ANC) policy conference were tight-lipped on Wednesday evening about the outcome of behind-closed-doors debate on the party’s strategy and tactics document. Earlier, party president Thabo Mbeki told delegates that the ANC had never sought to prescribe to the South African Communist Party the policies it should adopt.
South Africa’s platinum boom has given rise to mushrooming informal settlements by migrant labourers around mines, posing serious health, social and environmental risks to communities, a new report says. The world’s two biggest platinum producers, AngloPlat and Implats, have announced multibillion-rand expansion plans.