The governor and police chief of Iraq’s southern Diwaniya province were killed in a roadside bombing on Saturday, police said. Police said the two men had been returning to Diwaniya, the provincial capital, from a funeral for a leading tribal sheikh 30km east of the city when the bomb hit their convoy of four-wheel drives.
Failure to elect an African National Congress (ANC) leadership that respects the party’s branches and the tripartite alliance would lead to a right-wing victory within the ruling party, Congress of South African Trade Unions secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi said on Saturday.
South Africa have left batsman Jacques Kallis out of the squad for next month’s Twenty20 World Championship that they are hosting, it was announced on Saturday. Kallis, South Africa’s leading run-scorer in Tests and one-day internationals, has been criticised in the past for slow scoring in limited-overs matches.
The co-founder of the British record label that launched the careers of seminal bands including Joy Division, New Order and the Happy Mondays died on August 10 at the age of 57, a hospital spokesperson said. Anthony Wilson announced earlier this year that he had kidney cancer.
Sierra Leoneans queued in ramshackle cities and jungle villages on Saturday to vote in their first elections since United Nations peacekeepers left two years ago, a test of the nation’s recovery from a 1991 to 2002 civil war. Torrential rains cleared overnight in the capital, Freetown, and hundreds of people lined up around the block at several polling stations.
Former deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge was fired for her inability to work as part of the ”collective” and for undertaking a trip to Madrid against President Thabo Mbeki’s orders. This is according to the letter Mbeki sent to Madlala-Routledge on Wednesday firing her. The Presidency released the letter on Saturday to ”prevent further speculation.”
Gang fighting entered its sixth day in the anarchic oil city of Port Harcourt in southern Nigeria on Saturday with authorities acknowledging 11 deaths and residents and media putting the toll much higher. Residents and security sources gave conflicting reasons for the gang war that erupted on Monday and has spread all over the city.
Two Somali broadcast journalists were killed on Saturday in the capital, Mogadishu, where murder and armed attacks have become almost daily events, hours after four officials were shot dead. Ali Iman Sharmarke, the head of local private media group Horn Afrik, and one of his staff, Mahad Ahmed Elmi, were killed in separate incidents.
At least 35 people were killed after violent rainstorms triggered floods and landslides in various parts of China, state media reported on Saturday. At least 25 people were killed and 37 went missing in north-west China after continuous downpours began to hit cities and counties in Shaanxi province on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency reported.
President Thabo Mbeki made 80-year old Evelina Mokwena of Dukathole, Aliwal North, in the Eastern Cape, the proud owner of a house on Saturday. The president handed over the house to Mokwena who has lived in a shack for more than 10 years.