A day after Bob Geldof’s dazzling Live 8 concerts, his tie-in Sail 8 appeared a total disaster as just four boats — carrying a grand total of zero demonstrators — made it back to Britain from France. Participants admitted the stunt, designed to aid masses of continental protesters to reach the G8 summit demonstrations in Edinburgh, ”didn’t work” and was ”disappointing”.
The Medical Research Council plans to launch a national study on hospital infections later this year, council president Anthony Mbewu said on Monday. On Thursday, the Department of Health is expected to release a report into the causes of the deaths of 19 babies at KwaZulu-Natal’s Mahatma Gandhi memorial hospital.
The African Union inaugurated a two-day summit on Monday in Libya during which it is expected to hammer out a continental position on economic relations with the developed countries ahead of this week’s G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland. About 50 African leaders were gathered in the coastal city of Sirte for the event.
English league footballers admit they could have a different girl every night in their celebrity lifestyles. ”It wasn’t as often as a different girl every night, but it could have been,” Scotland striker Frank McAvennie recounts in a new book, Playing Away: The A-Z of Soccer Sex Scandals.
The decision on the host city for the 2012 Olympic Games took a distinctly political turn when French President Jacques Chirac decided to travel to Singapore to defend Paris’s candidacy ahead of the International Olympic Committee vote. There, he will be going head to head against British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
South African Tennis Association chief executive Ian Smith was ecstatic on Monday about the success of two South African players — Wesley Moodie and Liezel Huber — at Wimbledon over the weekend, but he believes there could be more success for South Africa if tennis could attract a long-term sponsor.
South African new vehicle sales hit another record last month with a 31% increase on the figures of June last year. A total of 50 044 vehicles were sold — 11 858 more than in June last year, the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of SA (Naamsa) said on Monday.
At least 10 people were killed and two were missing as storms and floods hit large areas of the eastern Balkans, leaving thousands of people stranded, officials said on Monday. Hundreds of people were evacuated across Bulgaria’s worst-hit regions of Veliko Tarnovo, Targovishte, Stara Zagora and Shumen.
Early parliamentary election results in Mauritius on Monday showed the opposition ahead in areas that were considered strongholds of the ruling alliance, private and state-owned radio stations said. The polls capped a campaign in which the governing coalition and the main opposition alliance ran a close race.
Nominal year-on-year growth of 23,3% in South African house prices was recorded in June this year, compared with a revised growth rate of 24,9% in May, according to the latest Absa house-price index released on Monday. On a month-on-month basis, nominal growth in house prices was 1,1% in June, compared with a revised 1,3% in May this year.