Israel will be urged on Friday to ease its blockade of the Gaza Strip to avert a humanitarian disaster as the Middle East ”quartet” meets to consider the state of the faltering peace process. Oxfam and five other United Kingdom aid agencies are calling for the quartet to end its ”complacency” by putting the ”highest diplomatic pressure” on Israel.
The United States on Thursday urged Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to "call off his dogs" who are allegedly attacking opposition supporters and to release the presidential election results. State Department deputy spokesperson Tom Casey questioned how credible the results of the March 29 election could be when they have yet to be released.
A photograph recently appeared in Johannesburg’s daily newspapers of overweight police officers working out in a communal gym. The cops were laughing, but it was a pitiful sight. The men and women in the picture, sweating and puffy, are the ones we depend on to save lives. They are the ones we trust to protect and to serve our communities, property and homes.
If you want to know how powerful Rupert Murdoch is, read the reviews of Bruce Dover’s book, <i>Rupert’s Adventures in China: How Murdoch Lost a Fortune and Found a Wife </i>(Mainstream Publishing). Well, go on, read them.
The biggest challenge facing the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) today is how best to redefine what the role a traditionally militant youth organisation is supposed to be in a democratic South Africa. An inability to recalibrate its vision to current realities has made it susceptible to being used as a vehicle for personal aggrandisement.
A Sudanese cameraman with the al-Jazeera on Friday accused United States authorities of insulting Islamic symbols on his return home after six years of detention at Guantánamo Bay. There were ”many violations — [we were] deprived from praying and there were … deliberate insults to God’s holy book” said Sami al-Haj.
Two suicide bombers killed 30 people and wounded 65 others when they detonated explosive vests in a busy market in a town north-east of Baghdad on Thursday, Iraqi police said. Police said the second bomber struck as crowds rushed to evacuate the wounded from the first attack.
Microsoft can build a competitive online advertising business without Yahoo! but it "could just take more time", CEO Steve Ballmer told the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> in an interview published on Friday. The comment came as analysts and industry watchers awaited an imminent announcement on Microsoft’s next move in its unresolved quest to acquire Yahoo!
Sudan will decide in two weeks whether to charge five people suspected of murdering a United States diplomat and his driver on January 1. Abdeen al-Tahir, a senior Interior Ministry official, told the Sudanese Media Centre the case would be referred to the Justice Ministry for trial in about 15 days.
The current electricity crisis and the proposed huge jump in tariffs is a manifestation of a disaster-in-waiting, African National Congress (ANC) secretary general and South African Communist Party chairperson Gwede Mantashe said on Thursday. He was speaking at the May Day celebration at Curries Fountain Stadium in Durban.