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/ 21 December 2006
Under normal circumstances, a review of a nation’s sporting progress would be inclined to be critical of failures. Losses would be analysed, disasters decried. But normal circumstances in modern South African sport imply failure, and thus hardened to sporting infamy, the armchair critic must refrain from launching unfairly pointed or excessively accurate barbs.
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/ 21 December 2006
England fast bowler Steve Harmison announced on Thursday he was retiring from one-day cricket, three months before the World Cup. Harmison (28) decided to suddenly quit after being left out of England’s 16-man squad for the upcoming triangular series whit Australia and New Zealand, the last tournament before next year’s World Cup in the West Indies.
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/ 21 December 2006
Shane Warne will retire from international and Australian domestic cricket after the fifth Ashes Test against England next month. The 37-year-old leg-spinner, Test cricket’s leading wicket taker with 699 dismissals, made the announcement on Thursday at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
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/ 21 December 2006
Cape Town mayor Helen Zille on Wednesday evening rejected a claim by Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool that the city had committed a major procedural blunder over the proposed Green Point 2010 Soccer World Cup stadium. An angry Rasool called on Zille to summon an urgent council meeting to rectify what he said was an error threatening the already-fragile construction timetable.
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/ 21 December 2006
How does one begin to capture the face of South African football in 2006? While the unfolding story of the 2010 Soccer World Cup has tended to dominate the news, the enduring shortcomings of the domestic game — football authorities’ inability to create viable support structures — continue to blight some of its well-intentioned initiatives.
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/ 21 December 2006
A 150-year old Australian public library has a new true-romance section after introducing speed-dating nights for lovers of classic texts. The state library of Victoria in Melbourne introduced dating with a literary twist after the idea was raised at a staff party.
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/ 21 December 2006
North Korea has a massive soft spot for the gifts given to its leaders. The isolated, impoverished nation has dedicated a museum to more than 220 000 items, including a bear’s head and a bullet-proof limousine, sent to ”Great Leader” Kim Il-sung and ”Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il from around the world.
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/ 21 December 2006
Eastern Cape provincial housing minister Sam Kwelita will visit tornado-ravaged Dutyini village to find out what help is needed. About 20 people were injured and more than 100 people from 65 families were left homeless when 85 households were destroyed or badly damaged by the tornado at Dutyini near Mount Ayliff on Sunday.
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/ 21 December 2006
A Japanese civil servant has described for the first time how he survived for more than three weeks in a mountain forest without food or water in what doctors believe is the first known case of a human going into hibernation. Mitsutaka Uchikoshi went missing on Mt Rokko in western Japan on October 7 after a barbecue with colleagues.
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/ 21 December 2006
A woman passed her one-month-old grandson through the X-ray machine at Los Angeles international airport, it was revealed on Wednesday. A security worker saw the baby entering the machine sitting on a plastic bin intended for hand luggage and jackets. The official hurriedly pulled the bin out along the conveyor belt.