Ninety-five percent of South Africans are proud to be South African, a survey by the University of Stellenbosch found. ”The overwhelming majority of South Africans are proud to be South African, prefer democracy as a governing system and believe that our democratic system will develop positively in the future,” said spokesperson Mari Harris on Thursday.
Russia on Thursday stepped up its row with the United States over American plans to build a missile defence shield in Europe by announcing that it was considering withdrawing from a Soviet-era weapons treaty. President Vladimir Putin said that Russia was considering a moratorium on the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty.
The top United States commander in Iraq admitted on Thursday that the conflict would "get harder before it gets easier", providing further ammunition for Democrats determined to face down George Bush in their constitutional clash over the Iraq war. General Petraeus warned of the enormous commitment and sacrifice facing the US in Iraq.
According to <i>Vanity Fair</i> magazine, he is "the man of the hour" — photographed by Annie Leibovitz at Iceland’s Jökulsárlón glacier and pictured on the cover. Leonardo DiCaprio is the Upper West Side’s new green poster boy, and in the ensuing pictorial portfolio his fellow "global citizens" line up behind him: ex-<i>Seinfeld</i> star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Alanis Morissette and Jack Johnson.
With tens of thousands of youths still out of work more than five years after the end of Sierra Leone’s civil war, there is concern over unemployment ahead of elections in July. In the capital, Freetown, young men loiter on street corners, in bars and in front of televisions in cafes. Many of them are former fighters.
Asbestos-relief activists have warned the Limpopo government not to go ahead with plans to develop a township on old asbestos mining fields. The Penge area, near Burgersfort, has been found to be contaminated with asbestos, which causes lung cancer, and unfit for human habitation. But Limpopo’s department of housing has already approved the development of an existing informal settlement into a formal township.
At least 200 000 people die every year from cancers related to their workplaces, mainly from inhaling asbestos fibres and second-hand tobacco smoke, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday. The United Nations agency said every 10th lung cancer death is related to occupational hazards, and about 125-million people worldwide are exposed to asbestos at work.
Hugh Grant has been arrested and questioned by police after a photographer accused the British actor of attacking him with a tub of baked beans. Photographer Ian Whittaker told the Daily Star tabloid that he and Grant (46) clashed near the home of the Four Weddings and a Funeral star.
An eight-storey building collapsed in Istanbul on Thursday, but authorities said they did not expect a great number of casualties as people ran away when they heard the building start to crack. It was not clear how many people were inside the building in the Sirinevler district on the European side of Istanbul, but most people had left the building before the collapse.
Ethiopian tanks supporting the Somali government pounded insurgent positions in Mogadishu on Thursday and Somalia’s prime minister declared significant gains after a nine-day offensive. Following the latest attack, Ali Mohamed Gedi said ”most fighting” had ended and allied Somali-Ethiopian troops were clearing ”pockets of resistance”.