A Pakistani cleric said a bid to shoot down President Pervez Musharraf’s plane was apparently in revenge for the bloody government siege of his mosque, in which he alleged that 70 students had died. The claim came as fighting intensified on the fifth day of the stand-off between radicals holed up in the bullet-scarred Red Mosque in Islamabad and security forces
Australia trailed 14-0 after eight minutes but rallied on either side of halftime for a 25-17 win over South Africa in a Tri-Nations rugby match on Saturday. A Matt Giteau try, his 17th in Test rugby, helped the Wallabies celebrate the final home appearances of two Australian veterans.
The Independent Democrats (ID) will campaign to take over the provincial Western Cape government in the 2009 elections, party leader Patricia de Lille said on Saturday. ”The signs are there; written in the results of most of the by-elections we have fought this year,” she said at the party’s national conference in Cape Town.
Francois Botha made a winning return to the ring after a five year absence when he outpointed the giant Australian Bob Mirovic in a 12-round bout for the WBF interim heavyweight title at the Carousel Casino on Friday night. The scoring in favour of Botha was 119-109, 120-108, and 120-107.
Fifa is backing down from its ban on international soccer matches in Bolivia’s capital of La Paz, the agency’s leader said Friday. Fifa president Sepp Blatter said he was responding to a request from Bolivian President Evo Morales, who led a campaign to overturn a ban announced in May on international soccer matches at altitudes of over 2 500m.
A series of car bombs and mortar attacks killed 50 people in Iraq, police and local officials said on Saturday, while the United States military announced six soldiers had been killed in the past two days. The fresh violence follows a relatively quiet few days in Iraq, where tens of thousands of US and Iraqi troops are on the offensive against insurgents
A lengthy legal battle over the rights to treasure believed to be worth £1-billion, which went down with a Spanish galleon 300 years ago off Colombia’s Caribbean coast, was thrown into further confusion on Friday despite a ruling by Colombia’s highest court to finally decide ownership.
United States President George Bush turned 61 on Friday but he had little to celebrate at the end of a week in which his isolation has been exposed as never before. Laura Bush held an early family party for him on Wednesday and on Thursday the president made a rare outing to watch a baseball game.
The African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) left no doubt on Friday about its opposition to the notion of ”two centres of power”. ”We remained steadfast that there cannot be two centres of power, because that would be disastrous for our country,” president Fikile Mbalula said in a statement.
The first of nine concerts across the globe aimed at persuading millions of fans to go green for the environment swung into life in Sydney on Saturday with fiery vocals and a distinctive Australian beat. Following in the footsteps of the Live Aid and Live 8 mega-gigs, Live Earth hopes to reach up to two billion people through radio, television and the internet.