World champion Fernando Alonso has come out against plans to stage Formula One grand prix races at night. Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone has spoken of wanting to include a number of night races on the F1 schedule as early as next season.
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South Africa’s record pursuit of 434 last year against Australia has given it belief that anything is possible in one-day cricket. Captain Graeme Smith pointed to the 3-2 series win over Australia in March 2006, capped by scoring 438 in the final game, as proof.
Parents of students at Oprah Winfrey’s all-girl leadership academy want better access to their children, comparing the school’s restrictions on visits, phone calls and email contact to prison rules. A few mothers complained that a two-hour visit one Sunday a month was not long enough to reconnect with their daughters.
South Africa wants the state to have the first opportunity to buy property entering the market to help speed up the redistribution of white-owned land to blacks, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. Whites still own over 90% of commercial farmland in South Africa, more than a decade after the end of apartheid.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang underwent a successful five-hour liver transplant on Wednesday due to a long-term disease that attacks the liver, the Department of Health confirmed. ”The operation was successful and uneventful,” said Professor Jeff Wing, head of the department of medicine at the Johannesburg Hospital and Wits University.
Zimbabwe’s neighbours must increase the pressure on Robert Mugabe’s regime after its violent crackdown on opposition politicians, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said on Thursday. He described Mugabe’s rule as an ”abomination”, saying that the president and his government ”have taken an enormously potentially successful country and destroyed it”.
Television, DVDs and computer games — that’s entertainment in war-torn Baghdad. That’s, if you’re lucky. Even the simple pleasure of sharing dinner with friends and relatives has fallen victim to fear of sectarian death squads and, more recently, by a strictly enforced 8pm to 6am curfew.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged number three in al-Qaeda, confessed to planning the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 2001, in front of the secret military tribunals being held for the top detainees in Guantánamo, the Pentagon said on Wednesday night.
When United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon took office in January, he made a public commitment to revamp the UN secretariat, inculcate high ethical standards and make his new administration fully transparent and accountable. "My watchword will be meritocracy, with due regard for gender balance and geographical representation," he pledged, speaking of impending appointments of senior officials.
Under apparent pressure from South Africa, President Robert Mugabe will submit himself to a popular presidential election in 2008 rather than extend his term for another two years. According to this scenario, presidential and parliamentary elections will be harmonised in 2008 after Parliament is dissolved in January next year.