Liverpool left star striker Michael Owen on the bench, increasing speculation about a possible transfer, but still downed Austria’s Grazer AK 2-0 in a Champions League qualifying match on Tuesday. But Juventus, another traditional soccer powerhouse, could only manage a 2-2 draw against Sweden’s Djurgarden.
The creative director for the official opening ceremony of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, Dimitrios Papaioannou, said on Wednesday that Friday’s showcase event is inspired by the aim of having an Olympics on a human scale. The ceremony has an expected worldwide television audience of up to four billion people.
Kumar Sangakkara scored a brilliant century for Sri Lanka on Wednesday as he dominated South Africa’s pace attack to lift the home side to 303 at stumps on the first day of the second cricket Test. Sri Lanka lost just three wickets at Colombo’s Sinhalese Sports Club ground.
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Rescuers have failed to free a humpback whale that washed up on a beach over the weekend, and biologists said on Tuesday its chances of survival are slim. More than 100 people still struggled to get the 10-ton whale off Jurujuba beach just across Rio de Janeiro at the entrance to Guanabara Bay and back into the ocean.
An earthquake measuring 5,6 on the Richter scale rocked south-west China on Tuesday, leaving three people dead and more than 250 injured, officials said. Two earthquakes measuring 5,1 and 5 on the Richter scale hit the same area on November 15 and 26 2003, killing four and injuring 120.
North African neighbours Chad and Niger on Tuesday appealed for international aid to battle an infestation of desert locusts, warning their already compromised populations could suffer food shortages. Millions of the finger-length insects have deluged the desert nations at the height of their crucial planting seasons
Ostrich meat is still safe for consumption despite the outbreak of avian flu on two farms in the Eastern Cape, the Klein Karoo group, which represents producers of ostrich meat and ostrich products, said on Tuesday. A spokesperson said the outbreak of the disease has been contained to the two farms in the Middleton area.
Ostrich culling to start in E Cape
The European Union’s head office criticised security forces and rebels in Côte d’Ivoire on Tuesday for continued violence as well as foot-dragging in organising elections called for in a deal last year that ended the country’s civil war. A Côte presidential spokesperson said the government is open to dialogue with the EU.
The Boeremag dreamed of using a building like that of Armscor in Pretoria as a sort of breeding farm for ”a new [Afrikaner] nation”, the city’s High Court heard on Tuesday. Free State potato farmer Henk van Zyl also told the court of a plan to blow up Afrikaans comedian Casper de Vries because ”he was not on the right path”.