![]()
There are few more thrilling sights in cricket than watching a fast bowler in action. That’s why the crowd at Grenada’s National Stadium on Friday will be doubly fortunate when champions Australia and New Zealand wrap up their World Cup Super Eights campaign.
The Canterbury Crusaders lead the Super 14 field into a weekend dominated by do-or-die local derbies that will effectively determine the true contenders for the play-offs. Five of the seven matches will have a distinct bearing on the outcome of the competition, and three involve crucial domestic clashes in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
The legitimacy of a much-ballyhooed Security Council meeting on climate change has been challenged by developing nations that argue that the threat to the global environment is not a subject within the purview of the UN’s most powerful political body. There is "no role" envisaged for the Security Council on climate change, Pakistan’s ambassador said.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu on Thursday called on the people of Taiwan to face their painful history if they are to heal the wounds caused by a 1947 uprising in which thousands were massacred. The slaughter of islanders by Nationalist troops brought in from mainland China remained taboo for decades under Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek.
Sharks were the wedding witnesses on Thursday as a Japanese couple tied the knot surrounded by water and fish in a unique ceremony at an aquarium. The bride, Nami Arakawa (28), and groom Kosuke Sugiura (29) chose to tie the knot inside a 20m transparent tunnel running through the aquarium.
Reports that Zimbabwean Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu has annulled the registration of all NGOs active in the country have been greeted with dismay by civil society representatives. State-controlled television was quoted as saying that the annulment was aimed at identifying "agents of imperialism".
The JSE retained its weaker tone at noon trade on Thursday on profit-taking while resources were hit by fears that Beijing might raise interest rates. At 12pm the all-share index was off 0,45%. Resources fell 0,65% and the gold- and platinum-mining indices gave up 0,50% and 0,05% respectively. Industrials were down 0,32%, financials eased 0,30% and banks shed 0,45%.
Brant Parker, who for decades illustrated The Wizard of Id comic strip, has died just days after the passing of his collaborator on the comic. He was 86. Parker, of Lynchburg, died on April 15 at a nursing facility from complications of Alzheimer’s disease and a stroke he suffered last year.
Thieves broke into a South African air base and stole at least R1,3-million earmarked for presidential flights abroad, a newspaper reported on Thursday. The thieves used crowbars to open two security doors and cut open safes on Tuesday night at the Waterkloof Air Base outside the capital Pretoria.
At least 400 youths blockaded roads, stoned passing vehicles and robbed motorists in Khutsong township on Wednesday night, police said. The youths had just returned from a mass meeting called by the Anti-North West Forum to discuss Merafong municipality’s incorporation into the North West from Gauteng.