South Africa’s health minister angered Aids activists on Tuesday when she told a national Aids conference that they should focus on other diseases and reiterated her view that drugs are not the only answer to fighting HIV. ”I hope you have come in such big numbers not just to focus on one ailment but to focus on all of them,” she said.
Fast-bowler Shabbir Ahmed rushed Pakistan to a comprehensive series-tying victory against the West Indies in less than an hour on the final day of the second cricket Test at Sabina Park on Tuesday. It was Pakistan’s first Test victory in the Caribbean since 1988, and earned them a 1-1 share of the two-match series.
After starting on a softer note, the JSE Securities Exchange moved into positive territory on Wednesday morning as the rand weakened from its intraday best levels. Traders said in the absence of any major corporate news, the equity market was eyeing the Monetary Policy Committee’s decision on interest rates, to be announced on Thursday afternoon.
Springbok coach Jake White on Tuesday used the Border Bulldogs to fine-tune his team ahead of Saturday’s rugby Test against Uruguay. The practice session at the Absa Stadium was watched by an appreciative crowd of young and old, with many fans able to secure autographs from the Springboks after the session.
Doubts over Lance Armstrong’s form could either be put to rest or escalate further after Wednesday’s time trial at the Dauphine Libere. Armstrong will attempt a seventh straight Tour de France win next month, and he is using the Dauphine Libere as a final tune-up following some below-par performances earlier in the season.
Jacques Chirac is the most unpopular president of the Fifth Republic since pollsters began measuring the personal approval ratings of French politicians in 1978. As the country continued to writhe in anxiety, self-doubt and anger after its rejection of the EU Constitution, a poll showed Chirac’s popularity had plunged 16 points to 26%.
Red-carpet treatment at the White House for Indonesia’s president and visits by the United States defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to Singapore and Thailand this week, are partly intended to shore up support in south-east Asia for Washington’s ”war on terror”.
Hopes of finding a long-lost work by Leonardo da Vinci have been fired by the discovery of a tiny cavity in a wall in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Leonardo is known to have begun a vast work, the Battle of Anghiari, on the same wall in 1505. A Florentine writer who saw it described it 44 years later as ”miraculous”.
Three people were injured on Wednesday when an Air Zimbabwe Boeing 737 made an emergency landing at Johannesburg International airport, an Airports Company South Africa spokesperson said. Jacqui O’Sullivan said the injured three were a pregnant woman, an epileptic and a passenger suffering from back pains.
Insurgents in Iraq ended a brief spell of peace on Tuesday with a wave of attacks that killed at least 19 people and wounded dozens more. Four bombs exploded in and around the town of Hawija in the space of seven minutes in a coordinated assault on Iraqi security forces and Untied States troops.