”Old stars fade, new stars light up the sky,” was how 110m hurdler Allen Johnson assessed athletics ahead of the world championships, and he couldn’t have been more correct. If the Helsinki championships were anything to go by, then the old guard has been stood down for the new kids on the block.
The South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) says that its members will begin to return to work on Monday. This comes after the union’s announced on Sunday that it was suspending its week-long strike. However Samwu spokesperson Roger Ronnie said that the wage dispute between the union and the South African Local Government Association (Salga) remains unresolved.
Politicians spend a great deal of our time and money passing myriad laws aimed at making us think they’re very busy people. The Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy may neither be created nor destroyed, so they’ re obviously putting lots of effort into converting worthwhile tasks into bullshit just to impress us voters.
Disabled groups are livid over a suggestion by Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi that Member of Parliament Gavin Woods would have long been fired if he were not disabled, media reports said on Monday. ”I am absolutely shocked. I find it quite, quite unbelievable,” said Ari Seirlis, national director of the QuadPara Association of SA.
The Australian rugby team’s already lengthy injury list got longer on Monday. Wallabies hooker Jeremy Paul has been ruled out of Saturday’s Tri-Nations match against South Africa in Perth. And Australia A flyhalf Lachlan MacKay, set to replace another injured player, failed a medical exam.
Gloom over Sri Lanka’s stagnant peace process intensified on Sunday as hundreds of troops and police manned hurriedly erected checkpoints throughout Colombo in the wake of the assassination of the foreign minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar.
A plane that crashed into a Greek mountain on Sunday, killing all 121 people on board, including dozens of children, may have been brought down by decompression or lack of oxygen in the cabin, incapacitating the pilots. Two Greek air force F-16 fighter jets were scrambled when the Cypriot plane lost contact with air-traffic controllers in Athens.
Up there in the vicinity of the Arctic Circle, the various ways of keeping warm keep you busy, I guess. Producing and consuming vodka seems to be a critical part of all of this. The Siberians originally set the pace, with the colonial Russians hard on their heels. You could say that the Siberians refined the rough art of turning potatoes, or whatever else was lying about, into blood-curdling alcohol.
Israel sealed off its Gaza settlements on Sunday night as a deadline passed for residents to leave their homes in a historic move that for the first time will see the razing of Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory. A combined force of about 50 000 troops and police is to be deployed over the coming days, in Israel’s largest military operation outside of a war.
Imvume Management, the company at the centre of the Mail & Guardian’s Oilgate exposés, has focused its counter-attack on the question of the newspaper’s sources. It has asked the Johannesburg High Court to force the paper to disclose where the information came from.