I’m not a fan. Which made it even more surprising, that whump in the stomach when I heard Kylie Minogue had postponed the Australian leg of her world tour after being diagnosed with breast cancer. There’s something disingenuous about feeling terribly distressed when an attractive, 37-year-old celebrity has breast cancer.
Germany’s embattled Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, suffered another blow on Tuesday when the former chairperson of his Social Democrat party (SPD) said he was defecting to a new leftwing alliance. Oskar Lafontaine said that in the September general election he would stand as a candidate for a rival leftwing group made up of communists and disaffected SPD members.
Rescuers searched on Tuesday night for the bodies of four construction workers buried when an excavation trench collapsed outside a water-sports shop in Randburg earlier that day. At about 7.30pm, a man was rescued after being wedged for four hours under a boulder lying diagonally over the trench.
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Iraq’s most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been wounded, his al-Qaeda front group said on its website on Tuesday in a statement that could not be verified. Zarqawi is Iraq’s most wanted man with a -million United States bounty on his head. His group has claimed a string of devastating attacks, assassinations and kidnappings.
Lifts that do not work properly, unannounced increases in the price of meals and a farcical security system are just some of the symptoms of a drop in standards at Parliament over recent years, says the Democratic Alliance. MPs have become far more accepting of a constant lowering of standards, DA deputy chief whip Mike Ellis said.
unior Spoornet employees are to receive a 4,5% salary increase, backdated to April 1, Transnet announced on Tuesday. The transport utility said the agreement follows weeks of tough negotiations with Spoornet’s recognised unions. An additional 1% has been reserved for performance-related adjustments.
Andre Agassi’s record 58th grand slam appearance ended in a shattering first-round defeat at the French Open on Tuesday, the loss surely marking the final act of the 35-year-old American’s Roland Garros adventure. Dominant at the start and shaky at the finish, Justine Henin-Hardenne won her first-round match on Tuesday.
The Colombian government said on Tuesday it will evacuate 9 000 people living near a volcano in south-west Colombia amid concerns it is about to erupt. The Galeras Volcano Observatory last month set its new warning system at level two, indicating a ”probability of an eruption within days or weeks”.
The Department of Health has approached the International Organisation for Migration as part of moves to bring nurses back to South Africa, Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Tuesday. South Africa is not the only country battling with the departure of health professionals, she said.