The ceremonial first pitch at a West Michigan Whitecaps baseball game on Friday was full of surprises. Not only was the pitch thrown by an elephant, but the ball went straight to catcher Chris Robinson’s mitt. Fans and players cheered the 2,7m-tall, four-tonne African elephant named Laura after she flipped the ball high and wide.
Former Spice Girl singer Victoria Beckham, wife of England football captain David, confessed she has never read a book, a newspaper said on Sunday. Despite struggling for a hit record for some time, Beckham said she never had a spare moment to leaf through anything more challenging than fashion magazines.
The wave of strikes that recently hit South Africa ground to a halt its vital gold industry and the national airline, among others, as unions struggled to negotiate wage hikes on the basis of the lowest inflation rate in years. But the economic impact of the protests is marginal compared with the past, analysts say.
Simbarashe Muchemwa points at a heap of broken asbestos and charred metal sheets — remnants of his makeshift furniture shop in Harare’s Glen View township — and shakes his head. ”This was my means of livelihood. It’s a loss that will take me years to recover from,” says the 30-year-old father of three.
Two KwaZulu-Natal transport department clerks were arrested on charges of issuing fraudulent driving and learner’s licences at Empangeni on the north coast on Friday. On Saturday, provincial transport minister Bheki Cele said his department will arrest everyone linked to the scam.
For decades, the streets of Greenwich Village beat as the counterculture heart of American life. From Bob Dylan and Jack Kerouac to the anonymous thousands fresh off the bus from Middle America, it has provided a sanctuary for the alternative and outcast. No longer. America’s Bohemian pulse has faded.
For months, the rhetoric of the opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan has verged on the violent, but now most Gaza settlers admit the battle is lost. All that remains is a symbolic show of resistance and last-minute haggling over compensation and resettlement.
A state of emergency was declared on Saturday in Sri Lanka following the assassination of the minister of foreign affairs by snipers at his home in the capital, Colombo. The state of emergency lets the military make arrests, interrogate suspects and search houses at will.
Iraq’s leaders were locked in frantic haggling over a new Constitution on Saturday night as the deadline for presenting a draft to Parliament expired. American diplomats offered their own proposed draft in a dramatic attempt to clinch a deal and avert a political crisis that would embarrass President George Bush.
A week after she gorged on bratwurst and grilled-cheese sandwiches, one of the world’s top competitive eaters gobbled down 44 lobsters in 12 minutes on Saturday to set a new speed-eating record. Sonya Thomas, who weighs 44,5kg, humbled her bigger male competitors as she consumed 5,13kg of lobster meat.