Swiss luxury goods group Richemont on Thursday reported a 33% increase in earnings per unit for the year ended March 31 to €1,588, from €1,193 a year ago. In rand terms, basic earnings per depositary receipt amounted to 126 cents — a 25% rise from a year ago and in line with expectations.
Giant Springbok lock Bakkies Botha became the latest withdrawal from Jake White’s injury plagued squad when he was diagnosed with a stress fracture of the right foot on Wednesday. Coach Jake White expressed his concern over the number of overuse injuries sustained before the start of the international season.
Lance Armstrong completed what he considered his first real test for the upcoming Tour de France by finishing third in the 47km time trial of the Dauphine Libere’s third stage in France on Wednesday. The race lead went to Levi Leipheimer, who took over from Samuel Dumoulin but lost out on winning to Santiago Botero.
If you ask outgoing Kaizer Chiefs coach Ted Dumitru — and a good many South Africans — about the consequences of a North African being appointed to referee the World Cup qualifying game between Bafana Bafana and Ghana, the reply would probably suggest it is further evidence of a dastardly conspiracy against South Africa.
A group of American security guards in Iraq have alleged they were beaten, stripped and threatened with a snarling dog by United States marines when they were detained after an alleged shooting incident outside Fallujah last month. ”I never in my career have treated anybody so inhumane,” said one of the contractors, Rick Blanchard.
Newly crowned French Open champion Rafael Nadal was brought down to earth in Germany on Wednesday losing his first match of the season on grass to lowly ranked German Alexander Waske. Doubles specialist Waske won 4-6, 7-5, 6-3, ending a 24-match unbeaten run from the 19-year-old Spaniard.
France’s new Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, refused on Wednesday to push the country down the road towards free-market reform, saying ”Gallic genius” would help put back on its feet a ”suffering, impatient and angry” nation that has failed to adapt fully to a changing world.
A wealthy American banker was drugged with a spiked strawberry milkshake and then bludgeoned to death by his wife, a court in Hong Kong heard on Wednesday, at the start of one of the most talked-about murder cases in the territory’s recent history.
Behind the barbed wire, the floodlights and the high redbrick walls of the county penitentiary in The Hague Tim MacFadden has never been so busy. The Irish military officer came here eight years ago to take charge of a challenging experiment in international justice — running the remand unit for the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal.
Documents released by a United States watchdog group, the Government Accountability Project, show that as chief of staff for the White House council on environmental quality, Philip Cooney, watered down government scientific papers on climate change and played up uncertainties in the scientific literature.