Linus Gerdemann of Germany won Saturday’s seventh stage of the Tour de France to take the overall leader’s yellow jersey as the race entered the Alps. Gerdemann won by speeding out from a group of breakaway riders during the 197km ride from Bourg-en-Bresse to Le Grand-Bornand.
Belgium’s Tom Boonen won Friday’s sixth stage of the Tour de France in a sprint finish, while Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara retained the leader’s yellow jersey for a seventh straight day. Boonen won the 199,5km trek from the Burgundy town of Semur-en-Auxois toward the foot of the Alps in Bourg-en-Bresse.
The leadership of South Africa’s communist party has signalled it wants to stay allied to the ruling African National Congress (ANC) rather than contest elections independently. A proposal to run a separate slate of candidates in the 2009 elections was put forth at the South African Communist Party national congress this week, but was quickly sidelined.
The outcome of government departments’ annual financial reports paints a bleak picture, Auditor General Terence Nombembe told the Johannesburg Press Club on Thursday. In the 2005/06 report, only 12% of government departments have clean audit opinions. This figure shrinks to 4% at provincial level.
Ethiopian scientists said on Tuesday they have discovered hominid fossil fragments dating from between 3,5-million and 3,8-million years ago in what could fill a crucial gap in the understanding of human evolution. Archaeologist Yohannes Haile Selassie said the find included several complete jaws and one partial skeleton.
The R5,3-million insurance policy on Taliep Petersen’s life, to which first his widow Najwa and later his minor daughter were beneficiaries, has not yet been paid. This was revealed in the Wynberg Regional Court in Cape Town on Tuesday. The court heard a bail application by Najwa and one of her three co-accused in Taliep’s murder.
Beverly Sills, one of the most popular American opera singers of the 1960s and 1970s, died on July 2 of cancer, New York’s Metropolitan Opera announced. She was 78. ”The soprano died in her home in Manhattan on July 2 after a brief battle with inoperable lung cancer,” the Met said in a statement, quoting her manager, Edgar Vincent.
Former Indian prime minister Chandra Shekhar, who was suffering from cancer, passed away in New Delhi on July 8. He was 80. Shekhar breathed his last at 8.45am local time at the Apollo Hospital in the Indian capital where he was being treated for bone cancer for the past three months, doctors said.
Western Cape African National Congress (ANC) provincial secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha on Tuesday accused the Paarl town council, led by the Democratic Alliance and Independent Democrats, of organising a witch-hunt against duly appointed council officials. He was responding to reports that the council had suspended municipal manager Sidima Kabanyane.
A meeting to resolve a dispute about moving ambulance services and clinics in Gauteng from municipal to provincial administration ”achieved nothing” on Monday, a trade union said. The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu), which opposes the move, met provincial health minister Brian Hlongwa in Johannesburg.