Fifa president Joseph Blatter has criticised the Olympic Games as being too big and too confusing and suggested some of the indoor sports could be transferred to the winter Games. In an interview with German radio, Blatter said he was also disappointed at the lack of atmosphere and poor spectator levels at the Olympic football tournament.
Special report: Olympics 2004
The Blue Bulls pulled off a magnificent victory to surge into a seven point lead at the top of the Currie Cup table, beating the Sharks 41-27 with an inspiring performance by Springbok scrumhalf Fourie du Preez. Du Preez scored one of his sides’ five tries and had a hand in at least two others as the Bulls made their intentions of winning a third consecutive title under coach Heyneke Meyer clear.
A billboard outside the Olympic Stadium declares: ”Impossible is Nothing”. Mbulaeni Mulaudzi proved that when he stunned the world’s best 800-metre runners with an incredible silver medal at the Olympic Games in Athens on Saturday night. Hestrie Cloete battled out an intense high jump final to also end with silver.
Special Report: Olympics 2004
Kenya’s tourism and wildlife minister Emmanuel Karisa Maitha has died of a heart attack during a press interview in Germany, reports said on Friday. After Maitha collapsed during an interview with Deustche Welle in Frankfurt on Thursday, he was taken to hospital, but doctors failed to resuscitate him, wrote the East African Standard newspaper.
A Zimbabwean court on Friday ruled that Briton Simon Mann was guilty of attempting to buy arms for an alleged coup plot in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea but absolved 66 other suspected mercenaries. Magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe said: ”The action by the accused [Mann] amounts at the most to attempting to purchase firearms. The accused is found guilty …”
Government’s regulations concerning black economic empowerment (BEE) policies have made investment in South Africa unattractive for both foreign and local investors, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said on Friday. Leon said he had recently returned from a visit to the United States, where he was surprised by the frequency and urgency with which American business leaders and politicians raised concerns about BEE in South Africa.
Equatorial Guinea and South Africa are discussing the possibility of extraditing Mark Thatcher, son of the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, accused of bankrolling a coup plot in Malabo, an official said on Friday. A formal extradition request has not yet been lodged by the Equato-Guinean authorities, said the official.
At least one of the two Russian plane crashes that killed 90 people this week was the result of a terrorist attack, a top Russian security service spokesperson said on Friday. Meanwhile, an Islamic group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades claimed responsibility on Friday for the crashes of both Russian planes.
World oil prices rose on Friday on concerns over the possibility of further unrest in major producer Iraq despite a ceasefire in its holy city of Najaf, where fighting has raged for weeks, traders said. The price of London’s benchmark Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in October climbed 44 cents to ,77 per barrel in early deals.
Zimbabwe police have arrested six white commercial farmers in the northern tobacco growing district of Karoi, about 260km north of Harare. Police said the farmers had defied government orders to leave their farms with immediate effect. The country’s Commercial Farmers’ Union did not know if its members had been arrested.