The International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted on Friday to drop baseball and softball from the 2012 Olympics in London. Meeting in Singapore, the 127th plenary assembly voted in secret on all 28 existing sports, with baseball and softball failing to receive the majority required to stay on the programme.
Two South Africans were among the 700 people injured in Thursday’s bomb blasts in London, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Friday. One was in a critical condition, the other seriously injured, spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa said. The identities of the man and woman cannot be released until their families have been informed.
Philippine Vice-President Noli de Castro, a popular ex-TV presenter whose greeting ”Good evening, nation” is known throughout the country, may see his ambitions for the top job realised sooner than he expected. So far, the vice president has not given signs of offering himself as an alternative to Arroyo.
Australia’s forwards have, it seems, thrown down the gauntlet. Coach Eddie Jones says there will be no backing down when the Wallabies meet the Springboks at the Telstra Stadium in Sydney on Saturday. So there. Jones says he plans to fight fire with fire, forget about the verbals and get on with the job of neutralising the South African pack.
Stopping HIV/Aids starts with knowing you have it, Global Business Coalition chief executive Richard Holbrooke said on Thursday. The former Clinton-era United States Cabinet member and ambassador to the United Nations is in South Africa to encourage local business to do more to save lives.
Prominent Soweto businessman Richard Maponya announced in a statement on Wednesday that he would — in a partnership with Zenprop Property Holdings — be developing Soweto’s first mega shopping mall at a cost of approximately R450-million.
One person was killed and 61 people were injured when a bus overturned on the Mabopane highway on Friday morning, Tshwane metro police reported. Meanwhile, a passenger was killed and two people seriously injured in an accident involving four trucks on the R72 near Port Alfred on Friday morning.
The 24-year-old Steve Gerrard ”has become a Dr Doolittle character: you remember, the two-headed llama, neatly tagged ‘push-me-pull-you”’, writes Neal Collins about Gerrard’s convoluted transfer saga. ”At one end, his agent … and the giant SFC corporation, at the other the club.”
”Every day and night I battle with my emotions about whether Bafana Bafana should qualify for the 2006 World Cup in Germany next year. I am a staunch supporter of Bafana Bafana … But I don’t want to cry any more. I believe the team has lost all of its old traits,” writes Ntuthuko Maphumulo.
South Africa will host the football World Cup five years from now. But, looking at what Germany has achieved a full year before it hosts the 2006 event, we have to meet a number of challenges urgently. The Germans have been preparing for the tournament for the past four years and that was evident during the Confederations Cup.