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Bangladesh captain Habibul Bashar is looking forward to an improved all-round performance from his team in their World Cup Super Eights match against South Africa in Georgetown on Saturday. Graeme Smith’s side have already earned four points by beating Sri Lanka and debutants Ireland, while Bangladesh have yet to open their account.
More than a dozen Filipinos were nailed to crosses and scores more whipped their backs into a bloody pulp on Friday in a gory ritual to mark the death of Jesus Christ. The voluntary crucifixions were the most extreme displays of religious devotion in this mainly Catholic country, where millions are praying and fasting ahead of the Easter weekend.
Climate experts neared agreement on Friday on the strongest United Nations warning yet about the impacts of global warming. But scientists working with government delegates from more than 100 nations on the UN climate panel were still stuck in talks after an all-night session in Brussels.
Like so many American teenage romances, it all began in a shopping mall — a 14-year-old schoolgirl smitten by an intriguing boy three years her senior. They exchanged SMSs messages, held hands in the back row of the cinema and, when the girl’s family heard that he was an orphan, they invited him to move in with them.
The United States admitted openly for the first time on Thursday that it was actively working to undermine Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe. The report will be seized on by Mugabe, who has repeatedly claimed that the US and Britain are seeking regime change.
Sudan’s regime should be punished for failing to implement a peacekeeping plan in Darfur, and the country is making it difficult for aid workers to transport food and medical aid, Britain’s international development secretary said in an interview published on Friday.
The CEO of South African telecommunications giant Telkom quit on Thursday after only 18 months in the job, the company said without giving a reason for his departure. Papi Molotsane, who has been criticised by analysts for his leadership style and lack of vision, will be replaced by the company’s chief operating officer.
As 15 sailors and marines were celebrating their release by the Iranian government, the bloody reality of the conflict in which they were embroiled struck British soldiers on Thursday on the streets of southern Iraq. Four soldiers on patrol in a Warrior armoured vehicle in Basra were killed, and another seriously injured, by a powerful roadside bomb.
A 15-year-old Indonesian girl has died of bird flu, a health ministry official said on Friday, taking the country’s human death toll from the virus to 73. Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, has had more deaths from the H5N1 strain of avian influenza than any other nation.
One of the last survivors of the Great Escape team of World War II, Ian Tapson, has died in Port Alfred at the age of 84. An essentially modest man, he rarely divulged he was one of five South Africans who were part of the team that planned and executed the escape from a German prisoner-of-war camp.