Serena Williams certainly didn’t look ready for the French Open on Wednesday. The six-time Grand Slam winner was upset 7-6 (2), 6-1 by Italy’s Francesca Schiavone in her opening match at the Italian Open, an important tune-up for the season’s first major, which starts in less than two weeks.
Stunt shows such as Jackass, where presenters hurt themselves, have inspired British teenagers to slap people in the street and film it on their cellphones. The craze, known as ”happy slapping”, has spread across Britain over the past six months, with youngsters recording their attacks and posting them on the internet.
The Auckland Blues have spiced up their do-or-die joust with the Waratahs for a Super 12 rugby play-off spot with claims that the series front-runners have had a charmed run with referees at the breakdown. Auckland are one of three teams vying for the last playoff slot with South Africa’s Northern Bulls.
Man does not live on bread alone, but Americans have become increasingly reliant on doughy carbohydrates in their diet. Now many in a rapidly expanding country are asking: ”What Would Jesus Eat?” That is the title of one of a growing number of Christian diet plans crowding the lifestyle shelves of mainstream bookshops.
At least 12,3-million people are trapped in forced labour around the world, according to estimates in a report by the United Nations agency the International Labour Organisation. More than three-quarters of these are subjected to forced labour by private companies or individuals rather than being victims of the state, the study suggests.
Sixty-two alleged mercenaries are expected back in South Africa by noon on Thursday after their release from a Zimbabwean jail, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported. Their lawyer, Alwyn Griebenow, said the men would leave a remand prison in Harare by 6am for the Beit Bridge border post near Musina in Limpopo.
The former child star Macaulay Culkin on Wednesday denied that Michael Jackson had ever molested him, and dismissed the current charges against the pop singer as ”absolutely ridiculous”. For the first time, Culkin, a defence witness at Jackson’s California trial on child molestation charges, admitted that as a child he had shared a bed with the 46-year-old singer on several occasions.
The number of suicide attacks in Iraq has reached a record high, with more than 67 insurgents blowing themselves up in the month of April alone. New figures show that of the 135 car bombings that month, which took hundreds of lives and inflicted thousands of injuries, more than half were suicide missions.
We were in the tourism Indaba media centre when a hack turned to a veteran journalist from East London’s <i>Daily Dispatch</i> and asked: "So what’s East London’s major tourism offering?" "Sun, sand and adventure," was the reply, followed by a list of things to do. "You really should come and have a look," the East London journalist insisted.
The last thing we expected on the back-roads of Langkawi was a traffic jam. But there we were, marooned behind a rickety old Datsun pick-up, inhaling the primeval pungency of its cargo of fruit as they warmed in the midday sun. The old man at the wheel was patiently waiting on a monitor lizard — four feet of shimmering silver from tail to flickering tongue — to amble across the road.