England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson said on Wednesday that striker Wayne Rooney had more than one break in his foot and would probably need a ”miracle” to be fit for the World Cup. Eriksson added that he planned to name Rooney in his provisional 23-man squad on Monday, a week before the official Fifa deadline, and then keep his fingers firmly crossed.
The Cabinet approved draft legislation on Wednesday regulating the tapping of telephones and intercepting of e-mails. Outstanding matters had been settled with cellphone companies, and the Bill would be submitted to Parliament for processing, government spokesperson Joel Netshitenzhe told reporters in Pretoria.
Two German engineers who were held hostage in Iraq for more than three months said they were glad to be alive after they returned home on Wednesday. Rene Braeunlich (32) and Thomas Nitzschke (28) landed at Berlin’s Tegel airport after spending the night at the German embassy in Baghdad following their release on Tuesday.
Two accused in the Boeremag treason trial, Herman van Rooyen (33) and Rudi Gouws (28), both from Bela Bela in Limpopo, went missing on Wednesday afternoon, police said. ”We have launched a massive search to track down these two,” national police spokesperson Director Sally de Beer said.
A 34-year-old woman escaped rape in Bushbuckridge when she bit off her attacker’s tongue, Limpopo police said on Wednesday. The woman was walking in a street in College View on Tuesday night when the man attacked her, said Superintendent Moatshe Ngoepe.
A huge earthquake with a magnitude of 8,0 on the Richter scale hit Pacific islands in the Tonga region early on Thursday, the United States Geological Survey reported. US authorities issued a tsunami warning for New Zealand and Fiji, officials said, and a tsunami watch for the rest of the Pacific.
Rights groups in Malawi on Wednesday protested against the naming of a new highway after Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, saying he does not deserve the honour because of his poor human rights record at home. The long-time Zimbabwean leader is to start a four-day state visit to Malawi on Wednesday.
The British government announced plans on Wednesday to deport virtually all foreign convicts in a bid to defuse a scandal that threatens to damage the governing Labour Party’s results in local elections. Thursday’s elections to more than 4Â 000 local authority seats are a key test for Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government.
The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) is to boycott a pay agreement signing ceremony with Minister of Education Naledi Pandor scheduled for Thursday. ”There is nothing wrong with the agreements,” the union said. However, it blames the Department of Education for delaying the signing of the agreements.
HIV/Aids in Southern Africa is under-reported, the voices of those most affected are least heard and the gender dimensions of the pandemic are not well reflected. This is according to a study released by the Media Monitoring Project and Gender Links in Johannesburg on Wednesday — which is also World Press Freedom Day — at a launch of the HIV/Aids and Gender Baseline Study and Media Resource Desk.