Athletics South Africa (ASA) on Monday appealed to athletes not to participate in the Spoornet Great Train Race in Port Elizabeth on Saturday as the event is not sanctioned by the organisation. ”We sincerely hope that all law-abiding and disciplined athletes will act responsibly and respond positively to this appeal,” ASA said.
Greece pledged on Tuesday to redress its finances one day after official figures showed that Olympics-related costs pushed Greece’s public debt, already one of Europe’s biggest, to new depths. ”There is a budgetary problem, and it will be dealt with,” the country’s Finance and Economy Minister Yiorgos Alogoskoufis told private radio station Flash.
A United Kingdom-based rugby player who left South Africa after playing for the SA Africans side in the 1950s to pursue a professional league career in the United Kingdom was officially given his Springbok colours at a function on Tuesday. The event was part of the South African Rugby Football Union’s (Sarfu) Yesterday’s Heroes programme.
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A French air-force fighter jet collided with an ultralight aircraft over central on France Monday, killing its two occupants, the Defence Ministry said in a statement. The Mirage 200 N was on a training flight over the city of Clermont-Ferrand when it hit the ultralight, a small, low-flying recreational plane resembling a paraglider.
A nationwide power failure on Monday left Bahrainis snarled in rush-hour traffic and without air conditioning on a day when temperatures reached the mid-fifties degrees Celsius. The United States Navy switched to generator power. A spokesperson for the electricity department blamed a ”technical fault”.
Experts say the future of the Leaning Tower of Pisa has been guaranteed for the next 300 years. Speaking two years after the completion of renovation works aimed at straightening up the 800-year-old landmark, Professor Carlo Viggiani of Naples University has told reporters ”the tower is definitely safe”.
The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) denied on Monday allegations of financial irregularities made by the head of its finance and administration department. A report in the Sunday Independent newspaper claimed the commission ”suspended a whistle-blower within its own ranks”.
The Pretoria High Court has — with ”no hesitation” — set aside rightwinger Eugene Terre’Blanche’s warrant of arrest and has told the Department of Correctional Services to release him from Potchefstroom prison immediately, following his arrest on Saturday for an alleged parole violation.
The Constitutional Court will start hearing a case on Tuesday that could determine whether South Africa becomes a haven for people sentenced in absentia in other countries. It centres on a South African who fled Canada in 1996 after being convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl over a nine-month period.