New South Wales throttled Otago 20-3 to earn a provisional share of the lead in Super 14 rugby on Friday, while the Western Force remained stuck on the bottom with a second straight draw. Centres Morgan Turinui and Sam Norton-Knight scored the only tries in rainy Dunedin, New Zealand.
Oil companies such as BP make the bulk of their money from the ”upstream” oil-production business. Saudi Arabia is the biggest oil exporter in the world and rising oil prices have swollen government coffers. Massive demand for oil around the world has helped fuel the biggest shipping boom in history. Where else does the money go?
Gougou, Gugu, Gege, Goule or Guge? A furious online debate has opened up in China over the recent adoption of a Mandarin name by Google — the latest in a series of controversies to hit the American online search company since it launched a Chinese service earlier this year.
Sri Lanka and rebel guerrillas on Friday stepped back from restarting one of the world’s bloodiest civil wars, agreeing to peace talks as the government called off air strikes and opened roads to Tamil Tiger-held areas. Jon Hanssen-Bauer, a Norwegian peace envoy, told reporters the two sides would resume talks.
Three years after the start of the Iraq war, one thing New York police do not lack is experience in dealing with protesters — so when they were called to a disturbance at the military recruitment centre in Times Square last October, it sounded like just another routine demonstration. Instead, they found 18 elderly women.
Hundreds of fishermen along Bangladesh’s southern coast returned to shore on Saturday as a cyclone packing winds of up to 160kph churned its way across the Bay of Bengal, officials said. Cyclone Mala, which in Bengali language means ”a garland of flowers”, was centred about 650km south-southwest of the seaport of Chittagong.
The chances of Romano Prodi being able to form Italy’s next government hung by a thread on Friday night after two crucial votes in the new Parliament threw into stark relief the difficulties he and the centre-left face in passing laws — a foretaste of the problems that a Prodi government would have implementing its programme.
The transfer of an anti-corruption unit detective to another branch has caused a major hiccup in a Cape Town Magistrate’s Court case involving two police officials and six police reservists facing charges of theft and corruption. The prosecution was unable to explain why the case has not been referred to the Western Cape directorate for public prosecutions.
The month following Workers’ Day will see strikes in the public sector, manufacturing, mining and construction and the service sector, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said in its May Day message on Friday. Spokesperson Patrick Craven said the strikes will be part of the Jobs and Poverty Campaign.
Malawi’s embattled Vice-President Cassim Chilumpha was arrested on treason charges on Friday night, after a court prevented the government from firing him, his lawyer said. Chilumpha is accused of conspiring with members of his United Democratic Front party to topple President Bingu wa Mutharika’s government.