The BMW Sauber Formula One team on Monday announced they had released former world champion Canadian Jacques Villeneuve from his contract. Villeneuve did not take part in Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix after informing the team that he had not fully recovered from an accident in Germany the previous weekend.
The Asbestos Relief Trust, set up to compensate asbestosis claimants, paid out more than R91-million in 1 378 claims in the past two years. Trust chairperson John Doidge said in his report on Monday: ”The manager’s report shows that to date we have been able to compensate 1 378 people suffering with an asbestos related disease.
A previously unknown group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of a German contractor last week in Nigeria and demanded the release of two jailed leaders as a condition for his freedom. The group also demanded that the hostage’s employer, construction firm Bilfinger and Berger, provide more infrastructure and jobs to the communities where they work.
Flash floods triggered by torrential rains have killed at least 120 people in Pakistan’s North West Frontier province, and forced hundreds of thousands out of their homes in neighbouring India, officials said on Monday. In the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, 100 people have died in four days of torrential monsoon rains.
Zimbabwe’s book fair, once Africa’s proudest annual literary celebration, now has only one tale to tell — the decline of a country brought to its knees by political and economic woes. The cultural life of the Southern African country — books, music, film and theatre — is being strangled by a severe economic crisis many critics blame on President Robert Mugabe’s government.
Oil company BP has indefinitely shut down the United State’s biggest oilfield after finding a pipeline leak, removing about 8% of US oil production and stoking fears that already high oil prices will shoot up further. Steve Marshall, president of BP Exploration Alaska, said on Sunday night that the eastern side of Prudhoe Bay would be shut down first, an operation anticipated to take 24 to 36 hours.
Israeli bombs killed at least 18 civilians in Lebanon and cut a vital aid lifeline to the south on Monday in renewed fighting after diplomatic efforts to end the 27-day-old war stalled. Hezbollah guerrillas responded by firing more rockets into northern Israel, wounding one person.
President Thabo Mbeki attacked green laws recently, saying they were causing development delays that had contributed to ”a quite considerable slowing down of economic activity”. Mbeki’s statement came amid growing resistance among national and provincial politicians to environmental impact assessments.
The case against two senior Scorpions investigators arrested on Saturday for alleged involvement in a drug-smuggling syndicate has been struck from the roll by the Kempton Park Magistrate’s Court. The case was dismissed on Monday by the senior public prosecutor for lack of evidence, said a National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson.
The tiny Midwestern United States town of Twinsburg was seeing double this weekend — and researchers of human behaviour could not be more pleased. More than 3 500 twins, triplets and quadruplets came to a place named after its twin founders for what event organisers call the largest gathering of twins in the world.