Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal both took confident first steps towards an eventual third straight grand-slam final showdown in the first round of the United States Open on Wednesday. Top seed Federer of Switzerland needed just one hour and 40 minutes to dispatch Wang Yeu-Tzuoo of Taiwan 6-4, 6-1, 6-0.
South Africa’s dams are 92% full, according to the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry’s records. The department reports on its website that the dams were only 65% full this time last year. This week, dam levels in the provinces ranged from overflowing in the Northern Cape to 72% full in Limpopo.
Australian telecoms giant Telstra said on Thursday it had paid $254-million for a majority stake in Chinese real-estate and home furnishing website SouFun Holdings. Telstra chairperson Sol Trujillo said the site was a market leader in China and would be managed by Sensis, which runs Telstra’s online directories such as the yellow and white pages.
Eighty-four African would-be immigrants drowned off Mauritania last Saturday when their boats sank attempting to reach Spain’s Canary Islands, Spanish news reports said on Wednesday. Mauritanian fishermen and rescuers retrieved the bodies from the sea and beaches near the capital Nouakchott, according to the radio station Cadena Ser.
Major powers will begin discussing an Iran sanctions resolution at a meeting in Europe next week if Tehran continues to defy a United Nations Security Council demand to halt uranium enrichment, the United States State Department said on Wednesday. But Iranian President Mohammad Ahmadinejad remained unmoved, telling state media: ”Sanctions cannot discourage people from making progress.”
The vice-chancellor of the Tshwane University of Technology, Professor Errol Tyobeka, was attacked with stones after he addressed a mass meeting of students on Wednesday afternoon, the Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania (Pasma) said. Pasma’s president, Mametlwe Sebei, said Tyobeka did not make a concrete commitment on the issues raised at the open-air meeting.
International credit ratings agency Moody’s Investor Services has issued its annual report on South Africa, saying the country’s mid-investment-grade ratings and stable outlook reflect a coherent macroeconomic framework, healthy public finances and extremely manageable foreign debt.
A homeless man has claimed that he witnessed the murder on mining tycoon Brett Kebble in Johannesburg last year, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Thursday. The man, whose name was withheld, told the broadcaster he was asleep in a park not far from the murder scene when the incident happened.
Brian de Palma’s noir movie The Black Dahlia premiered at the 63rd Venice Film Festival to critical acclaim on Wednesday as its 21-year-old star, Scarlett Johansson, paraded down the red carpet. The actor plays a femme fatale in the murder mystery set in 1940s Hollywood and film reviewers emerged from a preview screening acclaiming her on-screen sex appeal.
United States President George Bush’s speech marking the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina was interrupted for CNN viewers when one of the network’s presenters forgot a cardinal rule of broadcast journalism — turn your microphone off when you go to the toilet.