Gunfire erupted across Baghdad and Iraqis danced in the streets on Wednesday after their soccer team’s historic Asian Cup win, but two suicide car bombs marred the war-ravaged nation’s rare moment of unity. Police said a suicide car bomb exploded near a crowd of jubilant Iraqis, killing 30 and wounding 75 in Baghdad’s Mansour area.
A suggestion by a bungling Premier Soccer League (PSL) to league champions Mamelodi Sundowns to withdraw from the Telkom Charity Cup extravaganza at Mmabatho Stadium next Saturday has been rejected with the appropriate contempt. It was indeed the PSL who created the current embarrassing mish-mash in South African soccer.
It is part of a series of friendly fixtures masquerading as a make-believe competition. But if there is a touch of the Mad Hatter’s illogic attached to the format of the Vodacom Challenge, it will not prevent what should be another near-capacity crowd from cramming into the Eastern Province Rugby Stadium on Thursday night.
Did Jim Morrison OD on a nightclub toilet or die of a drug-induced heart attack in a bathtub at home? Thirty-six years after the death in Paris of the <i>Doors</i> legend, biographers are locking horns over his final hours. The latest book on the life and times of Morrison says he was found slumped behind a locked toilet door on July 3 1971 in the Rock’n Roll Circus.
Eskom says it cannot guarantee residents in the Cape Peninsula that there will be no blackouts when Koeberg’s Unit One is refuelled early next month, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Thursday. Eskom presented its short to medium term plans to officials from the city of Cape Town on Wednesday.
Agricultural scientists unveiled a cheap kit on Thursday to let African farmers test crops for a deadly poison that makes them unfit to eat and costs the continent millions of dollars in lost exports. Aflatoxin, a toxic chemical produced by a fungus, develops on maize, groundnuts, sorghum and cassava during hot weather and droughts.
Soweto’s Dube hostel — plagued in recent weeks by violent protests against poor service delivery — resembles a ghost town. Washing swaying in the wind is the only sign of life, along with the dank smell of urine mingled with that of burnt rubbish.
The United Nations intends to send a team of investigators to Côte d’Ivoire next week to investigate sexual abuse. A contingent of 734 peacekeepers from Morocco has been confined to barracks on allegations of sexually exploiting under-age girls.
Italian cycling fans believe making doping legal is the best way to save their troubled sport, according to a popular survey on Wednesday. The Astana team pulled out of the Tour de France on Tuesday after Kazakh rider Alexander Vinokourov tested positive in the latest in a string of doping scandals to rock cycling.
Ethiopia has never forgotten its boy prince, captured by the British army and taken to England where he died more than a century ago, a lonely, royal orphan and curiosity who still lies entombed in Windsor Castle. Officials in Addis Ababa have stepped up a push to have the remains of Prince Alemayehu repatriated.