Anti-apartheid activist Nan Cross died peacefully at Nazareth House, in Yeoville, Johannesburg, in the early hours of July 14 at the age of 79. A founding member of the Conscientious Objector Support Group, Cross was active in the End Conscription Campaign and Conscription Advice Service.
Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank Governor said on Saturday he is not opposed to President Robert Mugabe’s controversial price controls that have wreaked havoc on the country’s battered economy. However, Gideon Gono repeated his call for measures to be taken to stabilise prices in the country’s hyper-inflationary environment.
Three converted tries in the final 12 minutes carried the All Blacks to a 33-6 win over the Springboks in their Tri-Nations rugby Test in Christchurch on Saturday. The win put New Zealand level with Australia at the head of the championship and set the stage for a classic showdown when the two teams meet in Auckland next week.
Johannesburg metro police fired rubber bullets at Soweto hostel dwellers protesting on Saturday against a lack of service delivery. Protesting residents of the Dobsonville and Nancefield hostels took to the streets at 4.30am on Saturday along with Jabavu hostel dwellers, blockading roads with stones.
A controversial Starbucks coffee shop in the Forbidden City, the former imperial palace at the heart of Beijing, has closed its doors after years of opposition. A campaign for its closure has been brewing since early this year, when a television anchor complained about the American chain’s presence in the symbol of the Chinese nation.
With the recent release of reams of phone records from a woman accused of running a Washington prostitution ring, bloggers and others online have taken up the cause of hunting for links to elected officials and other prominent people. Bloggers, many of them liberal, are scouring the records and publishing what they find.
Three former state governors in Nigeria were charged in court on Friday with money laundering and stealing public funds. Prosecutors working for the Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission have pledged to bring to trial former governors accused of corruption who enjoyed constitutional immunity while in office.
Al-Qaeda has dug a deeper foothold in North Africa than ever before with the merger in recent months of a number of terrorist cells there, the United States Defence Secretary said on Friday. Robert Gates told reporters that the terrorist groups in the Maghreb are closely affiliated to al-Qaeda.
A Palestinian woman who fled her north Lebanon refugee camp two days before said on Friday there was so little food there that she was prepared to eat cats to survive. Joumana Wehbe fled along with secular Palestinian fighters and their families to free the way for a final army assault on the al-Qaeda-inspired militants holed up inside.
Australian federal police charged a 27-year-old Indian doctor on Saturday over his ”reckless” links with the alleged perpetrators of the attempted car-bomb attacks in the United Kingdom on June 29 and 30. After being held for 12 days, Mohamed Haneef (27) appeared in a Brisbane court charged with providing support to a terrorist organisation.