With the start of the new football season, talk will be about new coaches, players, coaching techniques and fitness levels, and how commercialisation of the game is widening inequality among the clubs. Little will be said about the role of luck. But, if in doubt about this aspect of the game, ask the one man whose name and fortune — or misfortune — best tell the story.
Captain Brian O’Driscoll is set to miss Ireland’s opening match of the World Cup next month after suffering a fractured sinus during a warm-up match in France, the Irish Rugby Union said on Friday. The 28-year-old centre was taken to hospital for X-rays with a suspected broken right cheekbone after receiving a punch an hour into the 42-6 victory over Bayonne on Thursday.
Beijing banned more than one million cars from its roads on Friday in a test run to improve air quality for the Olympics, easing gridlock but failing to lift a curtain of smog from the capital. More than 6Â 500 traffic police were on duty across the city to ensure car owners observed the ban, while an extra two million more trips were expected to be taken on subways and buses during the day.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang will go to the Johannesburg High Court on Friday to protect her reputation, the Star reported. Court papers show the minister and Medi-Clinic are asking for the return and prohibition of the use of various medical records and documents relating to the minister’s stay in a Cape Town hospital in 2005.
Three of the rescuers attempting to find six workers trapped in a Utah mine since last week have been killed following a cave-in, officials said on Thursday. Additionally, six rescuers were injured, said Tammy Kikuchi, a spokesperson with Utah’s department of natural resources.
There might be millions of characters in the Chinese language, but English letters and even symbols are increasingly being used as names in China. In one of the strangest names, parents tried to call their son "@", while other people have used transliterated English names to make their own sound more Western, the <i>First</i> newspaper reported.
Wouter Basson has been named as a co-conspirator in the indictment in the case against former law and order minister Adriaan Vlok, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Thursday. Vlok is facing attempted murder charges for the poisoning of former South African Council of Churches general secretary Frank Chikane.
A two-day summit of Southern African leaders closes in Lusaka, Zambia, on Friday with observers eagerly anticipating word on two reports on efforts to resolve the crisis in neighbouring Zimbabwe. South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki was due to report to the summit on his efforts to broker a stalemate between Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition.
Peruvians pulled hundreds of dead from the rubble of homes and churches on Thursday and bodies piled up on street corners after a huge earthquake ravaged the country’s central coast. CNN reported that 510 people were killed and 1 500 injured in the 8,0-magnitude quake on Wednesday night.
When the first CDs rolled off the presses at the Philips factory near Hanover, Germany, on August 17 1982, nobody realised these newfangled compact discs would revolutionise entertainment. By the 1990s, CDs had not only nearly pushed out vinyl records but also paved the way for other uses of the digital disc.