The Australian swimming team has taken exception to stinging media criticism of the men’s inability to win an individual gold medal at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games swimming competition. Aussie media have slammed the performance, coming four years after the men won 15 golds at the Manchester Games.
Australian police said on Wednesday that they are increasingly concerned for the safety of two Commonwealth Games competitors who went missing from the athletes’ village. Bangladesh 400m sprinter Tawhidul Mohammad Islam and Tanzanian boxer Omari Idd Kimweri disappeared on Monday and have not been seen since.
”As I write this, I’m sitting in Centane, a rural town in the Eastern Cape and a world apart from my office in Houghton, Johannesburg. Centane, along with Butterworth and Ngqamakwe, forms part of the Mnquma local municipality — home to about 300 000 people,” writes Gloria Serobe, CEO of Wiphold.
Samaresh Jung won his fifth shooting title at Melbourne 2006, moving within one gold medal of a Commonwealth Games record shared by Australian swimmers Ian Thorpe and Susie O’Neill. Ahead of Wednesday’s evening programme, Australia led the medal standings with 54 gold medals and 143 overall.
I went this morning for a haircut. I find something cathartic about cutting my hair. And how often and how short it gets cut is generally inversely proportional to my overall sense of peace with the world. So the fact that I’d gone almost six months without some drastic shave was impressive in its own right, writes Amanda Atwood.
Rising South African star Jackson Chauke cruised through the quarterfinals of the Commonwealth Games flyweight boxing competition in Melbourne on Wednesday. In the semifinal, he will face super-confident Ugandan Martin Mubiru who declared that he was unbeatable.
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A decision not to prosecute the maker of a herbal medication said to cure Aids will be referred to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in KwaZulu-Natal, the Democratic Alliance said on Tuesday. A Pinetown public prosecutor decided not to prosecute Zeblon Gwala, who makes and sells a herbal concoction said to cure HIV/Aids.
Suffering and sacrifices made during apartheid were not in vain, Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa said at a Human Rights Day rally in Sharpeville, Vereeniging, on Tuesday. The 1960 Sharpeville massacre was a ”watershed moment” that helped bring democracy to South Africa, President Thabo Mbeki said in Rome on Tuesday.
The regional leadership structure of the African National Congress in the Greater Pietermaritzburg region has been dissolved, the party said on Tuesday. The ANC’s KwaZulu-Natal secretary, Senzo Mchunu, said in a statement that the decision was taken after an intensive assessment of the regional leadership’s state.