South Africa winger Sibusiso Zuma has put club before country and refused to play in Sunday’s African Nations Cup qualifier against Zambia in Lusaka, officials confirmed on Saturday. Zuma has told caretaker coach Pitso Mosimane he is unavailable and wants to concentrate on establishing his place at German Bundesliga club Arminia Bielefeld.
Brazilian Felipe Massa took pole position for the Japanese Grand Prix on Saturday with championship-leading teammate Michael Schumacher alongside on an all-Ferrari front row. While Schumacher moved a step closer to an unprecedented eighth world championship before retirement, his Renault title rival Fernando Alonso qualified only fifth.
Somali Islamists arrested 35 people and shot in the air to disperse a protest in Kismayo against the new administration at the key port it seized last month, witnesses said on Saturday. Scores of people took to the streets late on Friday, burning tyres and blocking roads, after the Islamists appointed a new governor, mayor and heads of the airport, port and the city’s overall security.
Sudan on Friday pressed efforts to mend fences with the United Nations, denying suggestions that it had tried to ”intimidate” countries planning to contribute troops to a proposed UN force for war-torn Darfur. On Thursday the Security Council held a special meeting to discuss a Sudanese letter sent to African and Arab countries on Tuesday warning them that providing troops for the UN force would be seen by Khartoum as a ”hostile act”.
Madonna’s mission to help Malawi’s Aids orphans remained shrouded in mystery on Friday with a scheduled meeting between the pop star and a government minister failing to take place. The celebrity made a secretive visit to an orphanage near the capital, while rumours that she was to adopt a child persisted.
One of the girls who died in Pennsylvania’s Amish schoolhouse massacre asked the killer to shoot her first in an apparent bid to save younger girls. Rita Rhoads, a nurse-midwife who delivered 13-year-old Marian Fisher as well as another victim, said Fisher appealed to Charles Carl Roberts to shoot her first because she thought it might allow younger girls to survive.
North Korea is ”more or less ready” to conduct a nuclear test deep inside an abandoned coal mine but might hold off it can win concesssions from the United States, a Chinese source briefed by Pyongyang said on Friday. The source said a device would be detonated about 2Â 000 metres inside a mine near the border with China in the north of the country.
Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher put Renault’s Fernando Alonso on red alert after lapping nearly two seconds faster than his title rival in Saturday’s final Japanese Grand Prix practice. Schumacher, chasing an unprecedented eighth world championship before retirement, clocked a time of one minute 30,653 seconds on a bright but gusty morning at Suzuka.
Senior officials at the United Nations expressed despair on Friday at the prospect of Kofi Annan being succeeded as Secretary General by Ban Ki-moon, the South Korean Foreign Minister. ”The mood among staff is glum,” one of the officials said. ”We are not very excited about the outcome.”
Senegal will mark on Monday the 100th anniversary of the birth of "poet-president" Leopold Sedar Senghor, whose political and literary legacy will be honoured in events across the West African country in December. Senghor, who became Senegal’s first president after it gained independence in 1960, helped develop the concept of Negritude, or pride in black African culture.