The Canterbury Crusaders won the Super 14 title on Saturday with a 20-12 victory over the New South Wales Waratahs in Christchurch, New Zealand. Trailing by a point at half-time, the Crusaders stormed home on the boot of All Black flyhalf Dan Carter, who kicked four penalties and a drop goal for a personal tally of 15 points.
Former Malawian president Bakili Muluzi, who had been under house arrest over an alleged coup plot, was freed on bail on Friday after a judge said there was no reason to fear he would try to flee justice. Muluzi was ordered to post bail of 000 and report to police once a month as well as inform them of any plans to travel outside Blantyre.
Six Nations champions Wales will be looking to match everything the Springboks throw at them in the next fortnight when the teams meet in a two-Test series. But coach Warren Gatland said he was expecting no miracles from his injury-depleted squad that arrived in South Africa on Friday morning.
A British holidaymaker was awarded compensation by a court because there were too many German tourists at the hotel he booked into in Greece, newspapers reported on Saturday. David Barnish (47) took his family to a resort in Kos, but the family were unable to take part in entertainment activities because they were only organised in German.
A senior Zimbabwean army official has publicly urged soldiers to vote for President Robert Mugabe in next month’s presidential election run-off, a state daily reported on Saturday. "We have signed and agreed to fight and protect the ruling party’s principles of defending the revolution," Major General Martin Chedondo was quoted as saying.
The United Nations independent expert on racism urged South Africa on Friday to bring to justice those responsible for recent xenophobic violence that claimed more than 50 lives this month. ”I condemn these acts in the strongest terms,” special rapporteur Doudou Diene said as he called on South African authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Poor hygiene may have caused the diarrhoea outbreaks that killed nine babies in the Ndlambe municipal area in the Eastern Cape over the past three months, government departments said on Friday. The Water Affairs Department said although there had been poor water quality, this was neither ”excessive” nor ”severe enough” to cause diarrhoea outbreaks.
Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, claimed on Friday that President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party no longer ruled the country. This is technically true. The Movement for Democratic Change won a majority of seats in Parliament after the first round of elections on March 29.
Al-Qaeda has been essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and is on the defensive throughout most of the rest of the world, the CIA claimed on Friday. The upbeat assessment comes less than a year after United States intelligence reported that al-Qaeda had rebuilt its strength around the world and was well-placed to launch fresh attacks.
Barack Obama’s campaign on Friday tried to contain a new ”pastor disaster” prompted by a video of a Catholic guest preacher at his Chicago church mocking Hillary Clinton’s tears.In a sermon last Sunday, Father Michael Pfleger, a long-time ally of Obama, accused Clinton and white voters of believing she deserved to be president because she is white.