The battle over soccer television rights was settled on Thursday in an agreement in which the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) will screen 143 Premier Soccer League (PSL) matches. The agreement between the PSL, pay channel SuperSport and the public broadcaster gives the SABC exclusive screening rights to 110 matches.
He is a two-year-old cat and looks innocent enough. But at the nursing home where he lives in the United States state of Rhode Island, Oscar has developed a reputation as an angel of death. Since being adopted, he has revealed a rather morbid tendency to pick which patient is going to die next.
McLaren were cleared on Thursday by Formula One’s governing body, the FIA, of any wrongdoing in the espionage affair that has engulfed the sport this season. An extraordinary hearing of the 25-strong World Motor Sports Council, the sport’s highest body, ruled that there was no evidence the British team had benefited from confidential Ferrari documents.
Flash floods and rains in Sudan have killed 59 people and damaged 35 000 homes, Awad Widatallah Hussein, spokesperson for the government’s emergency response committee, said on Thursday. Officials described the floods as the worst in memory.
United States-led troops, backed by air power, killed more than 50 insurgents in a battle in Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand, the US military said on Thursday. There were no casualties among coalition troops in the 12-hour battle with Taliban militants, which finished early on Thursday, it said in a statement.
Libya accused Bulgaria on Thursday of violating an agreement between the two countries when it pardoned six medical workers convicted of intentionally infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV. Libya’s formal protest came a day after the HIV victims’ families condemned Bulgaria’s ”recklessness”.
Hundreds of thousands of Britons hit by the worst flooding in 60 years faced further misery on Thursday as forecasters predicted more rain in the areas most badly affected. Two people were found dead in a cellar in the west of England, raising to at least eight the number of people to have died as a result of record rainfall.
Rain driven by strong wind lashed the Cape Peninsula on Thursday, flooding more informal settlements on the Cape Flats. Cape Town disaster management spokesperson Johan Minnie said that on Thursday afternoon the city was providing shelter, food and blankets to about 1 200 people.
The African Union on Thursday urged Darfur’s disparate rebel factions to attend an upcoming meeting in Tanzania to find a common position and prepare for peace talks with Sudan’s government. ”The meeting will enable all the groups involved in the Darfur crisis to draw up a common position,” the AU’s special envoy for Darfur said.
Several alternative medicines that have been banned in other countries have easily found their way into the South African market, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Thursday. Briefing the media in Cape Town, DA spokesperson on health Mike Waters said the South African government was doing nothing to stop these dangerous products from being sold to people.