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/ 13 October 2005
Devery Freeman, a screenwriter who helped create the Writers’ Guild of America and wrote for such TV series as The Thin Man, has died. He was 92. Freeman, who had been ill since having open-heart surgery in March, died on Friday evening in Los Angeles, according to a statement on the guild’s website.
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/ 12 October 2005
A giant pumpkin weighing more than half a tonne has snatched top place in a world championship competition of giant vegetables held in California, organisers said on Tuesday. A retired firefighter won Monday’s World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off for the second year running with his humongous 557,47kg entry.
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/ 12 October 2005
Yahoo! said on Wednesday it will bar chat rooms that promote sex between minors and adults and restrict all chat rooms to users 18 and older. The internet portal also will pre-screen the names of all user-created chat rooms if and when it restores the ability to create them.
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/ 12 October 2005
The final portion of storm-savaged New Orleans was open to residents on Wednesday, with road blocks lifted at a neighbourhood nearly obliterated during hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Mayor Ray Nagin cleared the way for displaced residents to return to the Lower Ninth Ward for the first time since storms and flooding laid waste to the working-class neighborhood.
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/ 12 October 2005
South Africa’s transport parastatal Transnet may need up to R25-billion in funding over the next five years from the financial markets, Transnet group treasurer Swazi Tshabalala told the parliamentary public enterprises portfolio committee on Wednesday.
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/ 12 October 2005
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued a joint report on Wednesday highlighting the plight of thousands of child offenders serving life sentences in United States prisons without hope of parole. At least 2 225 people are currently held under such sentences for crimes committed before they were 18.
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/ 11 October 2005
Three police officers on Monday pleaded not guilty to charges of battery after they were filmed repeatedly beating a 64-year-old man outside a bar in New Orleans. Footage from Associated Press showed Robert Davis being punched in the face, his head striking a wall, before being bundled to the ground by four officers and subjected to blows and kicks.
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/ 11 October 2005
Championships were created to bring together the best players from around the globe. They have turned into an annuity for the world’s top-ranked player. In the year Tiger Woods won his 10th major championship, his play-off victory on Sunday over John Daly in the American Express Championship was his 10th world title since this series began in 1999.
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/ 10 October 2005
Vince began to break down on Monday over the cooler waters of the far eastern Atlantic, less than a day after making this hurricane season the second-busiest on record, forecasters said. The former Category One hurricane weakened to a tropical storm with top sustained winds near 96,6kph, said forecasters at the National Hurricane Centre.
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/ 10 October 2005
Forecasters at the National Hurricane Centre in the United States have struggled for more than a decade to issue accurate storm reports using broken equipment, an overbooked airplane fleet and tight budgets, a newspaper reported on Sunday. Key forecasting equipment used by the centre has broken down or been unavailable for nearly half of the 45 hurricanes that have struck land since 1992.
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/ 10 October 2005
In a phenomenal display of power between golf’s two biggest sluggers, Tiger Woods outlasted John Daly in the American Express Championship because of a one metre putt. Woods made up two shots over the final three holes on Sunday to force a playoff, then won on the second extra hole when Daly three-putted for bogey from 4,5-metres on the 16th, badly pulling his short par putt.
Merck opened its defence on Thursday in the second product liability trial over its arthritis medicine, countering claims that it did not study whether Vioxx might cause more heart ailments than other pain relievers. Merck researcher Dr Briggs Morrison told jurors the company conducted several studies of Vioxx before putting it on the market in May 1999, each concluding that Vioxx posed no threats to heart health.
The United States Congress held an unprecedented hearing on Thursday on India’s Dalits, once known as the ”untouchables,” highlighting what it calls a key human rights issue in the world’s largest democracy. About 200-million of India’s estimated population of a billion people are Dalits, occupying the bottom rung in Hinduism’s 2 500-year-old caste system.
Yahoo chairperson Terry Semel belittled rival Google’s recent efforts to expand beyond its leading internet search engine, describing the diversification as a haphazard attempt to catch up with his company. ”So far they don’t seem to have a plan, but maybe they do,” Semel said on Thursday.
Alligators have clashed with pythons before in the United States’s Everglades National Park. But when a 1,8m gator tangled with a 3,9m python recently, the result wasn’t pretty. But when a 1,8m gator tangled with a 3,9m python recently, the result wasn’t pretty. The snake apparently tried to swallow the gator whole — and then exploded.
Harold Leventhal, a renowned folk-music promoter who worked with Woody Guthrie and introduced Bob Dylan in his first major concert-hall show, has died. He was 86. From the 1950s to the end of the 20th century, Leventhal was a champion of folk music who introduced audiences to both American and foreign artists.
A former United States marine and naturalised US citizen from the Philippines breached security at the White House and allegedly used his top-secret clearances to steal classified documents from Vice-President Dick Cheney’s office, ABC News reported.
When the corpses come to town, anything can happen. Police seized a few of them during a raid in Taiwan. In Los Angeles, visitors gawked round-the-clock — and one was stolen. In San Francisco, some started oozing. So when the Body Worlds exhibit goes on display in Philadelphia, officials are hoping for an uneventful reception.
A new video-enabled iPod is expected to be unveiled by Apple Computer during a press conference next week — though the maverick company is masterful at foiling such predictions. Apple e-mailed invitations that included the words ”One more thing …” printed over a background photo that appears to depict theatre curtains.
United States government regulators are trying to shut down a company they say secretly downloaded spyware on to the computers of unwitting internet users, rendering them helpless to a flood of pop-up ads, computer crashes and other annoyances. Spyware is a growing problem on the internet.
Workers may have accidentally cut or crushed the section of foam that broke off Discovery‘s fuel tank during its launch two months ago — a mishap that threatened the safety of the astronauts and grounded the shuttle fleet. That is the leading theory for the cause behind the disturbing loss of foam insulation that cast a cloud over Nasa’s return to space, said Wayne Hale, the new manager of the space shuttle programme.
Mayor Ray Nagin said the city is laying off as many as 3 000 employees — or about half its workforce — because of the financial damage inflicted on New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. Nagin announced with ”great sadness” that he had been unable to find the money to keep the workers on the payroll.
Speaking from the International Space Station in orbit about Earth, American space tourist Greg Olsen said on Tuesday the experience was ”indescribable” and ”a dream come true”. ”I am having a great time. This is a dream come true, it’s an indescribable experience … I love it,” gushed the 59-year-old businessman and grandfather.
Young people today are better educated than any previous generation, but 130-million youths are still illiterate, more than half a billion live on less than a day, and a record 88-million are unemployed, according to a United Nations report. The report highlights the stark differences in the lives and opportunities of young people in poor African and Asian nations and richer Western countries.
Seeking to close a gap in the nation’s defence against mad cow disease, George Bush’s administration is proposing to eliminate cow brains and spinal cords from feed for all animals, including chickens, pigs and pets. The US government already bans virtually all cattle remains from cattle feed.
Police in Idaho in the United States have arrested a man suspected of trying to peddle his HIV-infected blood to a blood bank when he knew he was carrying the deadly virus. Officers in Boise, the capital of the largely agricultural western state, arrested 22-year-old Kyle Rich for knowingly attempting to transfer bodily fluids infected with human immunodeficiency virus.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned on Tuesday that Zimbabwe’s economy is in a state of virtual collapse with growth contracting, inflation rampant and poverty soaring. In an annual report issued after Zimbabwe won a six-month reprieve from the threat of expulsion from the IMF, directors expressed ”deep concern” at the economic situation under President Robert Mugabe.
The Pentagon has notified the United States Congress of possible military sales to Saudi Arabia valued at more than -billion, if all options are exercised. The proposed sales include a laundry list of armored personnel carriers, command vehicles, water cannons, a variety of trucks, ambulances, ammunition and assault rifles for the Saudi Arabian National Guard.
United States internet giant Yahoo! unveiled plans on Monday to take on its arch-rival Google with the launch of an ambitious and controversial online library of tens of thousands of classic books. Google last year unveiled similar plans but later suspended them amid fierce opposition from publishers and traditional libraries.
United States President George Bush nominated White House counsel and long-time loyalist Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court on Monday, a move that may shape legal battles on divisive issues such as abortion for decades. If confirmed by the US Senate, she would replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
A United States soldier convicted of abusing Iraqi prisoners said, in remarks made public late on Sunday, she knew of ”worse things” happening at Abu Ghraib and insisted military commanders were fully aware of what was going on in Iraq’s infamous jail.
The Pulitzer prize-winning American playwright August Wilson who chronicled black America died on Sunday of liver cancer at a hospital in Seattle, Washington, surrounded by family and friends, his assistant announced. He was 60. Wilson won wide acclaim for his stage plays, which focused on the African-American experience through the 20th century.