Iraqi teenage sprinter Alaa Jassim’s taste of Olympic competition lasted just less than 13 seconds in Athens on Friday but she said she would not have missed it for the world. The 18-year-old lives in Baghdad and trains six days a week, although only in the evening and only when there is no bombing or shooting.
President Thabo Mbeki struck a challenging note for ministers of the Non-Aligned Movement gathered in Durban this week. He urged them to quit the rarefied, airconditioned atmosphere of the conference centre and visit the squatter camps to experience the poverty there. ”The things we discuss here must impact on the lives of billions of ordinary people out there — in Durban, Ghaza and elsewhere.”
Knowing and respecting the contribution Professor Jonathan Jansen makes to intellectual life, I had hoped that in raising the North West University saga to serve his thesis on race and education, he would have advanced and sophisticated the discourse (”How far have we come?” August 13). It is a pity that some still harbour the idea that scholastic merit is subordinate to race, writes Sipho Seepe.
South African men’s rowing pair of Donovan Cech and Ramon di Clemente, in the true spirit of the Olympic Games, have put their weight behind the Canadian team in an effort to get their boat reinstated for Saturday’s final. Canadian rower Chris Jarvis said his team have a letter signed by the South Africans ”stating their support for us”.
Special Report: Olympics 2004
The organisers of the Athens Olympics have vainly tried to remove the Greek edition of Playboy from the newspaper stands for offending the Games with a section on the Olympian traditions of sex. ”Harder, deeper, longer,” was how the magazine paraphrased the Olympic motto ”faster, higher, stronger”.
Special Report: Olympics 2004
Complacency will be Kaizer Chiefs’ downfall against Black Leopards in the quarterfinal of the R1,3-million SAA Supa 8 match at the FNB Stadium on Saturday. The jungle cats from Limpopo are hurting. They were overshadowed 2-0 by AmaKhosi in the semifinal of the Telkom Charity Cup at the same venue last month.
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Delegates attending the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) ministerial conference in Durban, South Africa, are expected to shortly approve sanction-type measures against Israel, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Dr Nasser Al Kidwa, said on Thursday.
Legislation paving the way for registered nurses who have undergone prescribed training to perform abortions was approved in the National Assembly on Thursday, despite the objections of several opposition parties. A Democratic Alliance spokesperson said many DA MPs believe the Bill ”makes for very bad law”.
Workers were on Thursday beginning to clear thousands of tons of mud and rock from a main road in Scotland, a day after two massive landslides left more than 50 people stranded. Motorists had to be winched to safety by helicopter after the landslides blocked two parts of the A85 motorway in central Scotland.