The Pumas beat the Griffons 40-27 in a first-division Absa Currie Cup semifinal played at Witbank on Friday night. They will face either the Falcons or Elephants in the final. The half-time score was 16-13. The Pumas have only lost two games in their group but were made to fight for their points.
South Africa’s southpaw fighter Gabula Vabaza successfully defended his WBA super-bantam title when he outpointed his Ghanaian challenger Anyetei Laryea during their title contest at the Graceland Casino in Secunda in the early hours of Saturday. Vabaza had to chase his challenger in an attempt to connect him with some blows.
Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger believes the decision by bookmakers to pay out on Chelsea defending their Premiership title will backfire and spur his side to challenge their London rivals. While Chelsea are 11 points clear of Arsenal and 10 clear of Manchester United, Wenger insists the race is far from over.
Officials evacuated about 50 people from low-lying areas in the western Mexican resort city of Cabo San Lucas on Friday as newly formed Hurricane Otis swept toward a sparsely populated stretch of Baja California. Meanwhile, Taiwan on Saturday issued a sea and land warning for Typhoon Longwang.
New Zealand’s ruling Labour Party seems set to form a new minority government after the Electoral Office confirmed on Saturday it has the biggest number of seats in the nation’s Parliament. Labour took 50 seats in the September 17 election, two more than the main opposition National Party, final election results show.
A Soyuz rocket carrying United States millionaire scientist Gregory Olsen and a Russian-American crew lifted off on Saturday from the Central Asian steppes, launching the world’s third space tourist on a two-day journey to the international space station. The rocket streaked into the blue sky with an ear-splitting blast.
There were men with Fu Manchu moustaches. There were contestants with long, flowing Gandalf beards. About 220 contestants from all over the world gathered in Berlin, Germany, on Friday ahead of Saturday’s biannual world beard and moustache championships.
Austria will be given a blunt warning on Sunday that it will be blamed for rupturing 40 years of relations between the European Union and Turkey if it scuppers membership talks. In a sign of widespread irritation with Vienna, Britain’s foreign secretary has summoned his Austrian counterpart for a one-to-one meeting on Sunday night.
United States President George Bush has distanced himself from comments made by a leading Republican crusader on moral values who declared that one way to reduce the crime rate in the US would be to ”abort black babies”. William Bennett had been education secretary under Ronald Reagan and drugs czar under the first George Bush.
Large parts of the Amazon rainforest are at their driest in living memory, a direct consequence, scientists say, of the severe hurricane season off the United States Gulf coast. Rainfall has been significantly below average this year along the Rio Solimoes and the Rio Madeira, two of the major Brazilian tributaries that flow into the Amazon.