The people of Cape Town should bury their differences and build bridges between communities in 2008, Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool said on Wednesday. Addressing thousands who gathered to celebrate the minstrel carnival, Rasool said 2008 should be the year in which the Cape took greater strides in realising the vision of a ”home for all”.
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and other White House hopefuls beseeched Iowans to vote to change America as they sought to land an early blow in Thursday’s crucial first 2008 nominating clash. Both Democratic and Republican races were too close to call, before more than 200 000 activists cast their judgements in the fabled Iowa caucuses.
Oil prices vaulted to a record a barrel on Wednesday as violence in Nigeria, tight energy stockpiles and a weaker dollar triggered a surge of speculative buying, dealers said. Oil’s climb to the psychologically key triple-digit price helped send stocks tumbling on Wall Street and further darkened an already gloomy economic outlook in the United States.
Police and security forces went on alert across Sri Lanka on Thursday, hours after the government announced its withdrawal from a tattered ceasefire with Tamil Tiger rebels, security officials said. The already tight security in the capital was further strengthened one day after suspected rebels set off a roadside bomb that killed five and wounded 28.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf called for help from British police in probing the murder of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto as he sought to dampen public anger on Thursday a week after her death. He said a Scotland Yard team would "immediately" come to help resolve doubts surrounding the circumstances of how she died.
Defeated Kenyan opposition presidential candidate Raila Odinga was set Thursday to press his claims of vote fraud at a rally declaring him "the people’s president" despite threats of arrest, as the toll from post-election violence climbed above 340. The government has banned the Nairobi protest rally, one week after the election, over fears of further violence.
Six hours before she was executed, Mary, Queen of Scots wrote to her brother-in-law, Henry III of France: "As for my son, I commend him to you in so far as he deserves, for I cannot answer for him." The year was 1587. On December 30 last year a conclave of feudal potentates gathered in the home of the slain Benazir Bhutto to hear her last will and testament being read out and its contents subsequently announced to the world media.
In a letter addressed to Pope Benedict XVI and other Christian leaders 138 prominent Muslim scholars from every sect of Islam urged them "to come together with us on the common essentials of our two religions", spelling out the similarities between passages of the Bible and the Qur’an.
Shivnarine Chanderpaul made a typically patient half-century to anchor a shaky West Indian innings on the first day of the second Test against South Africa at Newlands in Cape Town on Wednesday. The West Indies, leading the three-match series 1-0, were 240-8 at the close, with Chanderpaul unbeaten on 64. Chanderpaul and Marlon Samuels (51) put on 106 for the fourth wicket.
The four people killed in a light aircraft crash in the Swartberg Mountains on Tuesday have been identified by relatives, Western Cape police said on Wednesday. The plane that was en route to Pretoria from Mossel bay was piloted by 51-year-old Phillip Ginsberg from Pretoria.