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Venus Williams won the Zurich Open today (Sunday 19 October) beating Flavia Pennetta 7-6 (1) 6-2. This win gives Venus her second singles title for the season, and last won at Zurich when she was teenager in 1999. Pennetta went it the match with a 3-1 career record against Williams and aimed at becoming only the third player to beat Williams for a fourth straight match.

Andy Murry beat Roger Federer 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 in the semi-finals and will take on Gilles Simon in the final.

Grammy winning recording artist Nelly Furtado secretly married over the summer. Furtado married the sound engineer on her last album Loose which featured the tracks Promiscuous and Maneater.

“I just feel kind of free and relaxed and more in tune with trying not to be so stressed out,” she said. “I’m happy … I’m excited about the future.”

Furtado four-year-old daughter Nevis, from a previous relationship that ended in 2005.

For the first time ever, internet users could chat to the astronauts in the ISS. Polish IM company Gadu-Gadu organised the chat transmission between IM users on Earth and the ISS crew.

“The internet users could ask them anything – from questions their everyday life in space to more scientific queries. Some questions were humorous, whereas others were more serious,” Jarek Rybus, spokesperson for Gadu-Gadu SA said.

Some of the questions asked were “How do you brush your teeth?”, “how do you make tea”, and “how do you sleep”. “They were very curious about the performance of normal activities in such unusual conditions,” Rybus said.

The crew plan on returning to Earth on the 24^th of October.

Richard Garriott, millionaire video game guru is paying $30m for his 10-day journey in space. A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying the millionaire docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday, a spokesperson for ground control told AFP. Apart from Garriot the capsule is also carrying Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov  and US astronaut Michael Fincke.

Hundreds of Woolworths workers marched through an outlet in Johannesburg’s CBD on Thursday. According to police, the workers were intimidating the employees and assaulted a truck driver. “The striking workers, who were supposed to be at different picketing posts, stormed through the Woolworths store in Market Street,” said Captain John Maluleke.

Employees of the chain store are demanding that the Woolworth’s management recognize their trade union, the South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union (Saccawu). Saccawu spokesperson Thabo Mahlangu said the general public who arrived to show support for the employees may have been responsible for the incident.