India’s star batsman Sachin Tendulkar is set to return to international cricket in August after a four-month absence due to shoulder surgery, an official said on Tuesday. ”The report we have got from our physiotherapist John Gloster is that Sachin is fit to play,” Indian cricket board secretary Niranjan Shah told the media.
A suicide bomber pulled his minivan into a busy market on Tuesday, lured labourers onboard with the promise of jobs and then blew himself up, killing at least 59 people in one the bloodiest attacks in Iraq this year. The blast in the Shi’ite city of Kufa wounded 132 people and sparked clashes between police and angry protesters.
The death toll in China from Tropical Storm Bilis has risen to 198, official media said on Tuesday, as 140 people remained missing and heavy rain continued to pound the south of the country. Forecasters had expected the storm to weaken as it hit mainland China but instead it brought more death and destruction, as well as paralysing transport and communications infrastructure.
Security officials for next year’s cricket World Cup aim to adopt a common approach in handling safety and protection issues from a two-day meeting which started on Monday. Regional police commissioners and their designated security officers met with the International Cricket Council and heads of the local organising committees of the nine countries hosting matches.
Avian influenza detected in poultry north-west of Mossel Bay is under control, the Department of Land Affairs and Agriculture said on Tuesday. ”The virus has been classified as type H5N2 which is not known to infect humans, unlike the H5N1 virus that has caused disease in humans in Asia, Europe and North Africa”, said spokesperson Nare Mabuela.
Two elephants from the Kruger National Park ”had to be killed” after a group of 15 wandered out of the park through a section of broken fence, a spokesperson said on Tuesday. The group of 15 adolescent bulls got out recently through a section of fence believed to have been damaged by people stealing parts of it, and wandered onto land adjoining the park.
A federal judge said that evidence favours a coalition of entertainment companies in their copyright infringement case against a distributor of online file-sharing software. United States District Judge Stephen Wilson made the statement on Monday during a hearing in the landmark case against the StreamCast firm behind the Morpheus file-swapping software.
The New York Times plans to shrink the size of its pages in 2008, making them about 4cm narrower, the newspaper reported in Tuesday’s edition. The newspaper also plans to cut 1Â 050 jobs, including 800 positions at a New Jersey printing plant whose workload will shift to another in New York City.
Former South African president Nelson Mandela said on Monday he ”never imagined” reaching the age of 88.
After making a brief foray into positive territory in early trade, the JSE was back in the red shortly before noon on Tuesday as uncertainty on global markets took its toll. A slightly stronger rand and lower base metals prices added to the bourse’s woes. By 11.41am, the all-share index shed 0,34%.