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/ 10 December 2005
A record late rush, precipitated perhaps by defending champions Kaizer Chiefs raising their waning stocks with a 5-2 midweek win over Free State Stars, on Friday sent ticket sales sky-high and ensured an 80 000-strong sell-out crowd for the big Premier Soccer League (PSL) derby against Orlando Pirates.
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/ 10 December 2005
Injury-stricken South Africa will turn to a corporate psychologist to help them prepare for their first Test against Australia in Perth next Friday. South African coach Mickey Arthur confirmed that Johannesburg-based psychologist Francois Hugo is due to arrive in Perth on Wednesday.
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/ 10 December 2005
A man who robbed a New Zealand bank was so disappointed with his haul he tried again — this time by phone, police said on Saturday. ”He’s rung [the bank] and said, ‘I’m the guy who robbed you the other day and I want the manager to put some money in a bag and go and stand in the street,”’ said a police spokesperson.
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/ 10 December 2005
The head of the Islamist group Hamas’s political branch, Khaled Meshaal, has announced that his group will not renew its fragile truce with Israel when it expires at the end of the year. ”We will not enter a new truce while our people are surrounded and are preparing for a new round of conflict,” Meshaal told a rally on Friday.
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/ 10 December 2005
The death toll in a massive coal-mining accident in northern China rose to 90, as the country’s Cabinet ordered the establishment of a special commission to investigate, state television reported on Saturday. A mixture of airborne coal dust and colourless, methane-laden gas known as fire damp ignited to cause the blast on Wednesday.
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/ 10 December 2005
Southern India braced on Saturday for the arrival of a powerful cyclonic storm expected to cross the Indian coast by noon (7.30 am GMT). The storm, named Fanoos, was expected to hit India’s south-eastern coastal state of Tamil Nadu with winds of up to 80kph and heavy rains, the Chennai weather office said.
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/ 10 December 2005
A group of Israeli intellectuals and activists has demanded that the Nobel Prize committee withdraw the award for economics to be made on Saturday to an Israeli mathematician and his American colleague on the grounds that they are ”warmongers”.
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/ 10 December 2005
Taliban insurgents attacked a district government headquarters in violence-plagued southern Afghanistan early on Saturday, sparking a battle that left seven police and five rebels dead, a local police official said. The persistent fighting comes ahead of an expansion of Nato-led peacekeeping operations to the south next year.
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/ 10 December 2005
A British Santa got the sack and was booted out of his grotto by bouncers for spending too long chatting to children, a newspaper reported on Saturday. It was more ”Go! Go! Go!” than ”Ho! Ho! Ho!” for actor Alan Seymour, who was told to clear off when he refused to stick to a strict 30-second time limit with each Santa-loving child.
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/ 10 December 2005
United States software giant Microsoft went on the offensive on the home turf of its Japanese rivals on Saturday, launching its sleek new Xbox 360 console ahead of the holiday season. About 200 game fans queued up for the main launch event that began at 7am local time at a music store in central Tokyo’s fashionable Shibuya district.