<b>NOT THE MOVIE OF THE WEEK:</b> <i>The Girl Next Door</i> is your average, run-of-the-mill teen flick about teens and porn flicks. Boy meets girl, loses girl, gets girl back — that is the story, and one that has been told a million times, writes Shaun de Waal.
European Union ministers on Friday gave the green light to negotiate a global-trade liberalisation treaty based on a revised text produced on Friday morning, which will force the bloc to abandon all export subsidies on farm goods. The group gave EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy a mandate to thrash out a deal.
A series of attacks on Friday struck the United States and Israeli embassies in Uzbekistan along with the country’s prosecutor general’s office, causing casualties, with at least two of the strikes staged by a suicide bomber. A US embassy official said a suicide bomber wearing a belt full of explosives set off the blast outside the embassy.
Explosives experts defused an American World War II bomb in a Berlin suburb on Friday after authorities evacuated 9Â 500 residents from apartments, several retirement homes and a hospital. The 250kg bomb was recently discovered during systematic searches for unexploded ordnance in Oranienburg.
In his weekly ANC Today newsletter, President Thabo Mbeki on Friday strongly criticised a report in last week’s Sunday Times, saying the newspaper is ”entirely wrong” in its claim that no additional funds have been set aside by the government for its expanded public works programme.
The South African Navy’s long-serving workhorse, the SAS Outeniqua, is being formally retired from the service on Friday — though she still has a lot of life left in her. The decommissioning of the 12-year old vessel marks a shift in the navy’s capability and spending priorities resulting in part from its acquisition of new corvettes.
A Zimbabwe court on Friday postponed until later this year a ruling in the case in which four directors of the popular independent Daily News are charged with illegally publishing the newspaper. Directors Samuel Nkomo, Brian Mutsau, Rachel Kupara and Michael Mattinson were ordered to return to court on September 20.
The women of the Kawempe Positive Women’s Union are among the new faces of the HIV/Aids epidemic in Uganda. The recent Aids conference in Bangkok, Thailand, shed light on the growing feminisation of HIV: 57% of those infected in sub-Saharan Africa are women. And 75% of the young people infected are females aged 15 to 24.
Six people were injured on Friday when an earthquake measuring 4,6 on the Richter scale shook the eastern Turkish town of Dogubeyazit close to the border with Iran, a local official said. The tremor, which caused minor damage, struck at 10.14am local time with an epicentre 18km north-east of the town.
Mail & Guardian editor Ferial Haffajee was on Thursday evening in Cape Town appointed Woman of the Year in the media and communications category. Sponsored by Shoprite Checkers and SABC2, the Women of the Year Awards recognise achievements by South African women in nine categories.