Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) will take its claim of victory in last month’s election over President Robert Mugabe to the United Nations Security Council this week. MDC secretary general Tendai Biti will lead a delegation to New York, where he will tell a Security Council session that the party is not prepared to partake in a presidential run-off.
India spinner Harbhajan Singh has been banned for the remainder of a domestic Twenty20 league after he was found guilty on Monday of slapping compatriot Shanthakumaran Sreesanth. Indian Premier League (IPL) commissioner Lalit Modi told a news conference that the cricketer would be fined all of his match fees from the tournament.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston usually plays host to the world’s leading scientists, Nobel laureates and technological pioneers. But at the weekend it was overrun by more than 500 self-professed ”internet geeks”. They were attending ROFLCon, a web symposium which attempted to answer conundrums such as why so many people like watching animated hamsters dance.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is taking large risks by investing more in private equity firms than it is allowed to and internal controls of such investments show ”serious weaknesses”, a media report said on Monday. The bank ”breached its capital allocation limit for private equity funds of 5%”, said the Financial Times, adding that it needed new risk management standards.
He is French literature’s ageing enfant terrible, a nihilistic provocateur who has never been afraid of a blazing row — whether it is appearing in court for inciting racial hatred, irking feminists, or raging against the publishing world. But Michel Houellebecq could be about to face his most bruising public spat: with his mother.
Springbok World Cup lock Bakkies Botha has called the Blue Bulls ”tyrannical and autocratic” in court papers presented to the Labour Court this week. Botha filed the court papers in a bid to have his contracts with SA Rugby and the Bulls be declared null and void.
Two men were injured when an unidentified man shot at them in a News Café on Rivonia Boulevard in Johannesburg on Sunday, paramedics said. ”A man was found lying on the floor by the door at News Café around 6pm. He had a gunshot wounds on both his legs, his head, chest and arm,” said spokesperson Werner Vermaak.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu urged world leaders on Sunday to stay away from the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in August. South Africa’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate lit a ”Tibetan” Olympic torch, which was kindled in Delhi on January 30 and will travel to cities on five continents before arriving in May back in Dharamsala, India.
There was a need for a ”new South African” who embodied everything that was morally good, President Thabo Mbeki said on Sunday. He was addressing several thousand people at the national Freedom Day celebrations at a blustery Turfhall Stadium in Cape Town.
A top United States official urged African leaders on Sunday to put pressure on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to release the results of the presidential election, insisting the opposition had won. The Southern Africa Development Community ”should ensure that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission releases the results of the elections,” said US Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer.