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/ 22 December 2006
After an historic 2005, the All Blacks were even more formidable this past season in an increasingly destined march to next year’s Rugby World Cup crown. New Zealand enjoyed 12 wins in 13 Tests, mirroring 2005 with only one loss, but without a Grand Slam tour of the United Kingdom or a series victory over the British and Irish Lions to parade.
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/ 22 December 2006
Serena and Venus Williams did not violate a contract with two promoters by not appearing at a 2001 tennis event, a jury ruled on Thursday. Promoters said they lost millions of dollars because the stars did not play, but jurors agreed with the argument of their attorney that their father, Richard Williams, was not empowered to represent them when he made the deal.
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/ 22 December 2006
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) was not divided into pro-Zuma and pro-Mbeki camps. Zwelinzima Vavi, the union’s general secretary, said they had ”spent the year trying to convince the media that Cosatu has not taken any decision to support [African National Congress (ANC) deputy president] Jacob Zuma, or anyone else, as the next president of the ANC and South Africa”.
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/ 22 December 2006
A two-year-old cheetah, who had her paw mangled in a crude snare, is to have a prosthetic leg fitted in a ground-breaking operation by animal surgeons in South Africa. Betty Blue was operated on at the De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Centre, near Johannesburg, after being rescued from the iron jaws of the trap which had clamped down on her left hind leg in Mpumalanga.
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/ 22 December 2006
Legal and technical experts from the Western Cape provincial government and the City of Cape Town met on Thursday to discuss a way forward on the city’s proposed 2010 Soccer World Cup stadium. Mayor Helen Zille said the experts were seeking a way to ”resolve the development approvals” required for the construction and would continue their work on Friday.
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/ 22 December 2006
The Congress of South African Trade Unions says it hopes that a basic income grant will be adopted at the African National Congress (ANC) policy conference in June 2007. Spokesperson Patrick Craven said: "We closed the year encouraged by Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya’s support for a reform [the basic income grant] that Cosatu has been campaigning for."
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/ 22 December 2006
Four United States marines were on Thursday night charged with murder and a further four with failure to investigate and report the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians, in the biggest US criminal case to arise from the Iraq war. The eight include Frank Wuterich (26) who was charged with the murder of 18 Iraqi civilians in the episode that has come to be known as the Iraq war’s My Lai.
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/ 22 December 2006
Imagine it’s the year 2010 and a United States tourist with an adventurous streak goes journeying through the South African countryside. Finding himself lost in the rural Free State, Sesotho is the only language he hears being spoken for miles. Disoriented and confused, he could try to sign and signal his way out of oblivion; or he could use his cellphone to learn a foreign language.
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/ 22 December 2006
Even by their own impressive standards as straight-talking controversialists, Donald Trump and Rosie O’Donnell must have surprised themselves by the intensity of the vitriol they flung at each other this week. She called him a bankrupt snake-oil salesman. He called her a fat-assed slob and threatened to sue.
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/ 22 December 2006
Along a stretch of the Atlantic coastline in France’s Basque country that is a magnet for surfers, the expression of regional identity has become a sartorial matter of choice. With its own language and culture, the Basque country, comprising northern Spain and south-west France, is often associated, especially on the Spanish side, with its struggle for territorial independence.