Undefeated centuries by opener Wavell Hinds and new captain Shivnarine Chanderpaul led the West Indies to 347 for three against South Africa in dominating the first day of the opening Test at Bourda on Thursday. Hinds blasted a career-best 188 and Chanderpaul was at 102 not out in a brilliant 241-run fourth-wicket stand.
Is it ungrateful to compare a cricket tour of the West Indies to a dilapidated funfair, to suggest that the cricket on display is the equivalent of empty shopping packets and old ticket stubs fluttering sadly on tangled barbed wire? Surely any Test series is an occasion, especially one spread across the tarnished jewels of the beautiful, poor West Indian islands?
Tax authorities in southern India have found a new way to handle tax evaders: sending teams of traditional drummers to pound away noisily outside their homes or shops until they pay up. Tax officials in Andhra Pradesh state’s Rajahmundry city said on Thursday they have recovered three-quarters of the money owed by people there
As Indonesians struggled to recover from the second deadly earthquake to strike them in three months, an Australian expert warned on Friday that the country faces the prospect of a ”super volcano” eruption that would dwarf all previous catastrophes. The world’s biggest super volcano is Lake Toba, on Indonesia’s island of Sumatra.
Sold for a song: The fast-food giant McDonald’s is reported to be launching a campaign that will offer financial incentives to rap artists who mention its Big Mac burger in their lyrics. Richard Jinman reports.
Most listeners would be reluctant to call the Real Estate Agents hip-hop, as their press release tries to sell them. Their sound is harder, more asynchronous, than the commercially sold sound. The Agents are turning the tables, writes Nadine Botha.
Chinese censors have banned Serve the People, named after Mao’s most famous slogan, saying ”This novella slanders Mao Zedong, the army, and is overflowing with sex.” Jonathan Watts reports from Beijing .
Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman whose condition sparked an epic legal, medical and political battle that has gripped the United States, died on Thursday, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed. Both US President George Bush and the Vatican expressed their concern at the circumstances of Schiavo’s death.
Father and son mining magnates Brett and Roger Kebble will appeal to the Constitutional Court after the Supreme Court of Appeal struck from the roll their application on seven share-price manipulation charges. The Kebbles argued that some of the charges they faced were civil and not criminal offences.
Until recently Mr Smith had a microscopic penis. As he browsed bookshops for biographies of Napoleon it cowered in the draperies of his underwear, an embryonic chipolata, a coy love-prawn. Mrs Smith tried to reassure him, but he was certain that the harpies at her depraved book-club gatherings talked of nothing else, crooking little fingers and revelling in his genetic betrayal.