Rafael Nadal’s 16-match winning streak ended when the 19-year-old Spaniard was beaten on Tuesday night in the first round of the Cincinnati Masters by a less-celebrated teenager. Tomas Berdych wore down the second-seeded Nadal in a two-hour, 57-minute match. Lleyton Hewitt played in his first match in the tournament.
Phil Mickelson might be the new PGA champion but it is Tiger Woods who will be firm favourite to collect the ,3-million first prize at this week’s WGC NEC Invitational. In the six previous NEC’s, Woods has amassed a stunning -million in prize money. He has won three times and never finished worse than fourth.
Australia, trying to end a three-match losing streak, has dumped backrowers George Smith and John Roe for Saturday’s Tri-Nations rugby Test against South Africa at Perth’s Subiaco Oval. The pair were replaced in the starting XV by Phil Waugh and Rocky Elsom.
Australians had turned against bad-boy bowler Shane Warne after yet another SMS sex scandal and the tacky front-page split with his long-suffering wife. Sponsors had cancelled their contracts with him and angry cricket fans had called on selectors to leave the serial philanderer and convicted drug cheat out of the team to face England in the annual Ashes five-game Test series.
The Zimbabwe government says it acted in the public interest when it launched a controversial urban clean-up campaign in May that was later condemned by the United Nations, the state-controlled Herald newspaper reported Wednesday.
The number of dead Iraqi civilians counted at the Baghdad morgue hit 1Â 100 in July, the highest toll in recent history, a British newspaper reported on Wednesday, blaming the daily violence. The Independent said the figure was just 700 short of the total number of United States soldiers killed in Iraq since April 2003.
Pension Funds Adjudicator Vuyani Ngalwane wants the government to put an end to the deduction of undisclosed costs from retirement annuities, Business Day reported on Wednesday. It said he had asked Finance Minister Trevor Manuel to declare such actions an ”undesirable business practice”.
The American Beverage Association recommended that soda and other sweetened beverages be pulled from vending machines at elementary schools across the United States, saying the industry needs to help fight the increasing rate of childhood obesity.
To witness Africa’s unrelenting hunger, look no further than into the fever-bright eyes of 17 severely malnourished infants languishing in a West African hospital. Worse than normal food crises raging in parts of Mali and elsewhere in Africa this year have focused new attention on the politics and geography of hunger across the world’s poorest continent.
Frankfort in the Free State was calm on Wednesday morning, but police remained on the alert for more service delivery protests. Police spokesperson Superintendent Motarafi Ntepe said a heavy police presence was maintained in Frankfort and Namahadi where demonstrations turned violent this week.