Lance Armstrong retook the overall lead in the Tour de France on Tuesday, closing in on a record sixth title with an emphatic sprint finish on the first Alpine stage. Armstrong outsprinted Italian Ivan Basso, his last real challenger after two weeks of punishing racing, to take his second stage victory in the 2004 tour and the 18th of his illustrious career.
Click on image for full-size view.
Negotiating parties played a waiting game in Pretoria on Monday as South Africa’s two top statesmen attempted to broker a Burundian power-sharing agreement. Generally regarded as the most powerful party in the talks, the CNDD-FDD was not sure if a conclusion would be reached before its departure on Tuesday.
Ten Janjaweed militiamen have been sentenced to six years in jail and each will have his right hand and left leg amputated in the first conviction by a special tribunal in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, the Sudanese Media Centre reported on Monday. The men were convicted of committing crimes against the western region’s black population.
The United States is offering South Africa defence equipment and training to upgrade its forces. Outgoing US Ambassador Cameron Hume said on Friday that South Africa has agreed to the US training and equipping two of its infantry battalions for peacekeeping duty.
An earthquake measuring 6,2 points on the Richter scale struck Vancouver Island off the Pacific coast of Canada early on Monday, but caused little damage and no known casualties. ”We have no report of damage” from the temblor, said Brad Fraser, spokesperson for the city’s police department.
Pro-whaling Japan narrowly failed on Monday in a bold attempt to ensure that voting at the International Whaling Commission is carried out in secret. Japan said secret balloting would allow small nations to vote without fear of economic or political pressure from foreign governments or anti-whaling organisations.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118949">Dark clouds on anti-whaling horizon</a>
The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) signed documents relating to a three-year syndicated loan transaction with a group of 39 international financial institutions in Cape Town on Monday. The proceeds of this loan, which matures in 2007, will be used to repay a syndicated loan entered into three years ago.
As a vice-president at security software leader Symantec, Matthew Moynahan applauds Microsoft’s effort to make its Windows operating system safer from attack. But Moynahan is not so excited about the flood of help-desk calls almost certain to come when Microsoft releases a security overhaul of Windows XP next month.
The change of guard at Absa won’t see any change in the South African banking group’s policy on internationalisation. Instead, it prefers to remain fundamentally a homespun operation, focusing instead on expanding its foothold in the retail banking sphere and growing returns from its African operations.