A 31-year-old woman who wounded a British soldier with her stiletto heel after he tried to break up a row was ordered on Wednesday to pay him £170 in compensation. Mark McCay (23) was taken to hospital with a bloody cut after he was hit on the head by Lisa Ashworth’s shoe in the early hours of July 1 2004.
Italian football went on trial on Thursday at a sports tribunal hearing in Rome that will decide whether four of the country’s top clubs colluded to rig matches over a period of several years. The scandal, which broke last month, has dominated headlines in football-crazed Italy, and could result in the teams being excluded from European competition and relegated to second-division play.
Negotiators from South and North Korea on Thursday launched talks on the prospect of forming of a unified team for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, officials said. The delegations, led by sports and government officials, were holding the one-day discussions in the North Korean border town of Kaesong, Korea Olympic Committee spokesperson Chun Moon-Young said.
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Classic match-ups steeped in history and involving teams that have won 15 out of the 17 World Cups contested feature in Friday and Saturday’s spectacular World Cup quarterfinals. It’s a long way from four years ago in East Asia when South Korea, Turkey, the United States and Senegal all gave the last eight line-up an unconventional look.
The JSE was in positive territory at noon on Thursday, in line with world markets, which were all stronger ahead of the United States Federal Open Market Committee. At 12.01pm, the all-share index added 1,36%. Resources rallied 1,94%, the platinum-mining index jumped 1,96% and the gold-mining index gained 0,53%.
Ghana crashed out of the World Cup in Germany on its maiden appearance much earlier than its vociferous football fans and countrymen had wished. The 0-3 loss to mighty Brazil and defending champions in the second round on Tuesday ended their World Cup dreams and broke hundreds of thousands of hearts.
Stung by their inability to end 15 years of conflict in Somalia, African Union leaders prepare to confront the issue with no clear solution except to recite old appeals and re-emphasise the pressing need for stability for the Horn of African nation. Despite fears of the Somali developments, the leaders meeting at a weekend summit appear unlikely to endorse any new proposal to try to halt the unrest.
The first tomb discovered in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings in 80 years doesn’t have any mummies, but archaeologists opened the last of eight sarcophagi on Wednesday and found something they say is even more valuable: embalming materials and a rare collar of ancient, woven flowers.
Efforts by Africans to seek a better life in Europe were brought to the fore on Wednesday as African foreign ministers started meeting ahead of a summit of heads of states. The Gambian Vice-President Isatou Njie-Saidy and African Union Commission president Alpha Konare urged the ministers to come up with a common strategy on the ”vexing” issue of international migration.
An unusual international alliance of private companies and governments is slated to choose a site in the United States for the world’s cleanest coal-fuelled power plant, called FutureGen, by summer 2007. The alliance includes the governments of India and China, as well as large coal producers and consumers from the US, Britain, China and Australia.