SA Rugby has the full backing of the government for its 2011 Rugby World Cup bid, Francois Pienaar, bid committee chief executive, said on Wednesday. A sports ministry spokesperson recently said the government will withdraw its backing should SA Rugby fail to transform. However, Pienaar said the government’s backing is not in doubt.
Saxophonist Charlie Parker, who helped invent the modern jazz style of be-bop, was also one of jazz’s first existential heroes — a famously self-destructive genius who died at age 34. Well before his death 50 years ago, hastened by a lifetime battle with booze and heroin, Parker could claim to be one of the most important innovators in jazz history.
Far more people have died in Sudan’s ravaged Darfur region than the 70 000 reported since last year, and many of those deaths were from preventable causes like pneumonia and diarrhoea, the United Nations humanitarian chief said on Wednesday.
The English Premier League will have two flag-carriers in the quarterfinals of the Champions League after Liverpool coasted to a 3-1 victory over Bayer Leverkusen in their knockout round second-leg match on Wednesday. But another English Premier League side, Arsenal, failed to overcome a 3-1 away defeat to former winners Bayern Munich in Germany.
Former All Blacks hooker Tom Willis will not play rugby again this year, ruling himself out of both the Chiefs and Waikato to give his injured back time to heal. The decision is a blow to the Chiefs, for whom Willis was a major influence following his transfer from Otago last season before suffering a prolapsed disc in his back during the Super 12 last April.
A superb Thierry Henry goal was not enough to spare Arsenal from another year of underachievement in Europe on Wednesday as Bayern Munich held out to squeeze into the Champions League quarterfinals 3-2 on aggregate. Henry’s opportunist strike midway through the second half earned the Gunners a 1-0 win on the night.
Namibian-listed brewer Namibian Breweries, one of the country’s largest private-sector employers, has reported a fall in its headline earnings per share for the six months to the end of December 2004 to 18,4 cents, from 19,4 cents in the year-earlier period. The group declared an interim dividend of 5,5 cents per share.
Fujitsu South Africa, part of Japanese-based Fujitsu, the world’s third-largest IT company with annual revenues of R300-billion and more than 156Â 000 employees, on Wednesday sold a 30% stake to Yard Capital, a black economic empowerment (BEE) investment company headed by Leslie Maasdorp and Irene Charnley.
South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers on Wednesday in a statement accused the South African mining industry and the government of not paying enough attention to safety. The statement followed Wednesday’s earthquake at DRDGold’s Hartebeestfontein gold mine in the North West province.
Former world number one Kim Clijsters continued her comeback from injury on Wednesday, overpowering Nicole Pratt 6-2, 6-1 in the first round of the ,1-million Pacific Life Open. The 21-year-old Belgian needed just 49 minutes to dispatch the Australian, covering the court with a wide selection of shots and hammering 16 winners to Pratt’s four.