Under-strength Zimbabwe and debutants Ireland may look like a lightweight contest in a World Cup group which also includes mighty West Indies and Pakistan. But both need a win on Thursday if they are to have any hope of progressing in the tournament.
Zimbabwean opposition chief Morgan Tsvangirai and 49 other opposition activists were released from hospital into their lawyers’ custody late on Tuesday, one of the lawyers said. Tsvangirai was detained on Sunday, along with dozens of other activists, after a police crackdown on an opposition rally.
Asian stocks plunged on Wednesday after Wall Street chalked its second-biggest drop in four years and rattled already nervous markets worldwide. The tumble extended a couple weeks of international trading turmoil rooted in concerns about overheated global markets and slower growth in the American economy.
Retirement-fund tax is gone. It has not merely been reduced, it has been abolished. Retired. At a time when only a tiny minority of people can afford to retire without a plunge in living standards, Finance Minister’s Trevor Manuel’s ending of a decade of taxation of retirement savings should be celebrated by those far-sighted enough to plan for retirement.
Syria is hailing its return from international isolation with a landmark visit on Wednesday by the European Union’s foreign policy chief as diplomacy in the Middle East intensifies ahead of a key Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia at the end of this month.
Gay rights groups on Tuesday criticised the head of the United States joint chiefs of staff, General Peter Pace, over an interview in which he described homosexuals as ”immoral”. Aides to Pace insisted he was not planning to apologise. But he later put out a statement that he described as a clarification.
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Australian paceman Glenn McGrath claimed on Wednesday that World Cup Group A rivals South Africa can’t handle pressure. The two sides meet in Basseterre, St Kitts, on March 24 in what will be a highly-charged game with the winner taking crucial extra points with them into the second round Super Eights.
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Dwayne Smith claimed three for 36 to follow up an explosive 32 off 15 balls as the West Indies launched the 2007 Cricket World Cup with a 54-run victory over Pakistan on Tuesday. Pakistan, chasing the West Indies’ total of 241 for nine off 50 overs, slumped to 187 all out off 47.2 overs.
Underdevelopment, poverty and the low status of women remained the main ”drivers” of HIV/Aids in South Africa, the Health Department said on Wednesday. An estimated 55% of those living with HIV in South Africa were women, according to the draft National Strategic Plan on HIV/Aids and Sexually Transmitted Infections.
”I once spoke to a journalist who had covered the war in Bosnia in the early 1990s. He said that he and his colleagues kept heading into harm’s way, because they believed that once the world knew of the horrors they had witnessed, the world would be stirred to act,” writes Jonathan Freedland.