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/ 7 November 2007
Afghans began three days of national mourning on Wednesday for 41 people, many of them children, killed in the country’s worst suicide attack to date. The attack shakes public confidence in the ability of the Afghan government and the 50 000 foreign troops in the country to provide security.
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/ 7 November 2007
A two-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs was on Tuesday undergoing surgery by a team of 40 doctors in an operation that the hospital hopes will leave her with a normal body. The girl, named Lakshmi after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, suffers from ischiopagus.
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/ 7 November 2007
Two of Africa’s most respected elder statesmen, Botswana’s former president Ketumile Masire and Mozambican ex-leader Joaquim Chissano, believe the continent is finally shedding its reputation as a theatre of conflict and corrupt governance.
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/ 7 November 2007
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Tuesday he was committed to the north-south peace deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war and there would be no return to hostilities after a crisis threatened the pact. ”I would like to assure you there will be no return to war whatsoever,” he said at a state banquet with South African President Thabo Mbeki.
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/ 7 November 2007
Every day that gunshots ring out in a Mogadishu neighbourhood, every week that an explosion rips homes into plumes of dust, and every month that thousands of civilians flee the capital, Somalia plunges deeper into crisis. Last week’s resignation of Ali Mohamed Gedi, the country’s Prime Minister, is the latest shake-up in a chronology of political turmoil in the Horn of Africa state.
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/ 6 November 2007
President Thabo Mbeki says the name Bafana Bafana is unfit for the national soccer team. The president seems to think the name should carry with it the notion of a formidable foe, and ”boys boys” doesn’t quite do it. Mbeki’s remarks may be valid, but they beg the question: why should the president concern himself with such matters, asks Mahmood Sanglay.
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/ 6 November 2007
The annual conference of the International Bar Association, the world’s biggest meeting of lawyers, was officially opened in Singapore recently by Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew. Yew, Singapore’s long-time ruler and a lawyer by training, was in no mind to soft-peddle his prescriptions for the island state’s success. ”If I had permitted freedom of expression,” he confidently announced, ”I would not be here tonight and neither would all of you.”
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/ 6 November 2007
A 21-year-old man was handed a life sentence by the Grahamstown High Court on Tuesday for raping and killing his sister-in-law. Judge Nambitha Dambuza, who sat with two assessors, also sentenced Themba Ngxokongxa, of Siviwe, Komga, to 20 years for rape and 15 for robbery with aggravating circumstances.
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/ 6 November 2007
Sudan has asked South Africa to mediate on Darfur, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said on Tuesday as attempts to end a conflict that has killed more than 200 000 and forced 2,5-million from their homes appeared to founder. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir met President Thabo Mbeki on Tuesday.
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/ 6 November 2007
Premier Soccer League (PSL) board members deserve to be rewarded with millions of rands for their role in securing the controversial Absa soccer sponsorship deal, MPs heard on Tuesday. ”They have done the best for football … and have acted in the best interest of the PSL,” league chairperson Irvin Khoza said.