One would have thought that after last year’s fiasco the organisers of the Blue IQ half-marathon would have learned a thing or two, but this year’s race — which started and finished at Mary Fitzgerald Square in Newtown, Johannesburg, on Sunday — was no better.
Godfrey Khotso Mokoena added a gold medal in the triple jump to his long-jump silver at the 10th IAAF World Junior Athletics Championships in Grosseto, Italy, on Sunday. That brought South Africa’s medal tally to six — two gold and four silver — which saw the country placed joint fifth behind the United States, Russia, Kenya and Belarus.
American Tyler Hamilton’s retirement from the Tour de France will not change the way his Swiss Phonak team regard their leader, according to team manager Jacques Michaud. The 33-year-old American sustained a back injury from a crash that led to his retirement from the race early in Saturday’s tough 13th stage.
Springboks rugby coach Jake White does not share Australia’s complaint that the All Blacks are overly aggressive but he is surprised at the lenient response to recent incidents. He was speaking after the Springboks arrived in Wellington on Monday for Saturday’s Tri-Nations Test.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei confirmed on Saturday that he had tendered his resignation to veteran leader Yasser Arafat, an offer that Cabinet ministers said was rejected. Qorei submitted his resignation in a morning meeting at Arafat’s Muqataa headquarters after a spate of kidnappings in the Gaza Strip.
Charles W Sweeney, a retired Air Force general who piloted the plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki in the final days of World War II, has died at age 84. About 70 000 people were killed in the explosion of the bomb, dubbed ”Fat Man”. It was the first bomb Sweeney ever dropped on an enemy target.
A ,2-billion natural-gas project led by South Africa’s petrochemical giant Sasol in neighbouring Mozambique has fuelled hopes for the economic recovery of the country’s once-vibrant southern hub. With the Matola gas project, Mozambique also hopes to cut its annual fuel imports by about -million.
Demand for rare reptiles as pets has made Japan one of the top markets for smuggled exotic animals and conservationists in the country are concerned that law-enforcement authorities lack teeth to deal with the problem. Lax enforcement of laws against smugglers encourages the underground business.
Cameroon has freed two journalists working for the BBC who had been detained by the military for six days on suspicion of spying in the disputed, oil-rich Bakassi peninsula. One of the journalists is South African Farouk Chothia, a producer with the BBC’s African service and a former Mail & Guardian journalist.
African Union-sponsored talks to end the slaughter of tens of thousands of people in Sudan’s western Darfur region have collapsed with two rebel groups saying the government still isn’t implementing existing peace agreements. African mediators worked to try and save the negotiations, which got under way on Thursday.