Overtaking at the San Marino Grand Prix is about as difficult as passing another car on the narrow, single-lane country roads that surround the Enzo and Dino Ferrari circuit. Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso know the routine all too well. Schumacher held off Alonso for nearly half of the 62 laps in a duel to the finish on Sunday.
Rafael Nadal forced Roger Federer out of his comfort zone to defeat the Swiss for the fourth time in five meetings with a 6-2, 6-7 (2/7), 6-3, 7-6 (7/5) victory on Sunday to win the Monte Carlo Masters. Success in three hours and 49 minutes marked Federer’s second defeat this season — both at the hands of Nadal.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) will fully cooperate with a probe into corruption allegations against a number of its executive members, spokesperson Makhosini Nkosi said on Monday. ”We will accept the outcome of the probe and implement whatever recommendations will come of it,” he said.
The two most senior judges in the Supreme Court of Appeal will form part of a full bench to hear the appeal of Schabir Shaik later this year, media reports said on Monday. They are Judge Craig Howie, president of the court, and his deputy Judge Lex Mpati.
Six boys at a small Alaskan middle school were arrested at the weekend on suspicion of planning to carry out a Columbine-style massacre. Police in the town of North Pole said the arrests were made after a concerned parent raised the alarm. Officers say the boys — all around the age of 13 — intended to bring guns and knives to the school to kill their classmates and teachers.
Osama bin Laden issued an ominous warning on Sunday, apparently seeking to justify attacks on civilians in the West and calling on his supporters to open up a new front in al-Qaeda’s struggle. Referring to current events, he spoke about the Palestinians’ election of a Hamas government and urged his supporters to open up a new front in Sudan.
Cape Town mayor Helen Zille will demand police protection before going into townships again — and she’s laying charges after being attacked at a meeting, media reports said on Monday. She was hit on the head and suffered bruises after being attacked at a community meeting in Crossroads on Saturday.
Stand on the top of Heroes’ Acre, a monument to Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle on a hill outside Harare, and you notice two things. Halfway down the slope dozens of fresh tombs of polished black granite are being prepared for the octogenarians who led the country to independence in 1980 and remain in power. The plot beside Sally Mugabe, Robert Mugabe’s first wife, is vacant.
Environment has forever been a lip-service ministry, given usually to some also-ran politician, the present incarnate Marthinus van Schalkwyk being a refugee from a defunct political party. But there are now signs that it is going mainstream. The Treasury has tabled a discussion paper that seeks to move the environment from the periphery to the centre of economic policy-making.
Genocide in Rwanda had been under way for 48 hours when 36-year-old Monique was told by a friend she would be killed. Monique fled, but her 12-year-old niece, Geraldine, was raped that night, and took years to die. ”Aids is the second genocide,” says Monique, who lost 27 members of her close family in 1994.