Rafael Nadal clinched his 50th successive victory on clay in Rome on Thursday with a 6-2, 6-2 win over Britain’s Tim Henman to reach the Rome Masters quarterfinals as he closed in on Guillermo Vilas’s all-time record on the surface. If Nadal successfully defends his title on Sunday, he will equal the record set by Argentine Vilas who managed 53 straight wins on clay in 1977.
A 280kg man had to be removed from his home by a crane because he could no longer leave the apartment through the door, an official said on Friday. In an operation that took three hours to complete and involved 12 firefighters, the man was taken out of his apartment through a window and transported by a van to Strasbourg’s University Hospital for treatment.
Tropical storm Chanchu slammed into the Philippines overnight, causing flash floods and landslides that forced the evacuation of hundreds of villagers, disaster-relief officials said on Friday. The storm, the first to hit the Philippines this year, left more than 6 000 people stranded.
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Evidence in court should not be seen as a policy statement, particularly on Aids, the African National Congress and its alliance partners said on Friday in welcoming Jacob Zuma’s acquittal on a rape charge. The media and other commentators should not ”proceed from a position of ignorance”, said the ANC’s weekly online newsletter.
As Jacob Zuma renews his drive for the Presidency, his key supporters move back into the spotlight. The pillars of his campaign are:
”Stella Sigcau, Minister of Public Works who died this week, cut her teeth on homeland politics and was involved with government from the late 1960s, when I was still at school. At that stage, the Matanzimas ran Transkei,” writes Bantu Holomisa, president of the United Democratic Movement.
Under our Constitution, poor people have enhanced opportunities to use the powerful language and institutions of human rights law to protect and advance their interests. But how have they fared thus far? The Constitutional Court has established the foundations of its jurisprudence on socio-economic rights in a series of landmark cases.
Hundreds of women dressed in blue and white church uniforms, green and black African National Congress Women’s League gear and new yellow Women’s League T-shirts had just finished singing songs honouring Thabo Mbeki. ”50/50 re a rata / Hela Basadi / Thabo Mbeki re mo ratile [We love the ANC’s 50% gender balance / We women / We love Thabo Mbeki],” they sang.
Former Drum journalist Can Themba commented that there were names that did not lend themselves to the prefix ”mister”. Among them he included his own and that of Jesus Christ. This came to my mind when I learned that Patrick Pule ”Ace” Ntsoelengoe, one of South Africa’s greatest footballers, had been found dead in his car.
The repairs on Unit One at the Koeberg nuclear power station in the Western Cape were on schedule for completion in the third week of May and refuelling of Unit Two was to commence in the fourth week of May, Eskom said on Friday. This follows huge blackouts related to problems at the power supplier since November.