Zimbabwe’s ruling party is planning a major cleansing exercise to remove elements who are tarnishing its image with bad behaviour, President Robert Mugabe told leading party members on Friday. ”You are not being fair — some people are just being crookish,” he was quoted as telling 400 members of his Zanu-PF central committee.
The New York Times on Friday received a letter containing a suspicious white powder and a copy of a recent editorial in which the paper defended its coverage of the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism programmes. The powder incident raised fears of a repeat of a series of anthrax attacks in the United States, which started one week after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah declared ”open war” on Israel on Friday after emerging unscathed from an Israeli air strike on his home and office in the Lebanese capital. Meanwhile, a United Nations Security Council emergency meeting ended with no action on Beirut’s demand for an immediate end to Israeli air strikes on its territory.
The South African Trade and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) on Friday accused Fidelity Springbok Security Services of discriminating against its members. Spokesperson Ronnie Mamba said in a statement on Friday that Fidelity ”continues to target Satawu members for abuse, intimidation and victimisation”.
Gauteng’s school-bus transport saga is over, the provincial education department said on Friday. Education provincial minister Angie Motshekga said that misunderstandings about the payment of bus operators had been handled at an urgent meeting in the morning.
Ukrainian Yaroslav Popovych of the Discovery Channel team won the 12th stage of the Tour de France on Friday to deprive the hosts of a coveted victory on Bastille Day. American Floyd Landis retained the race leader’s yellow jersey ahead of Saturday’s 13th stage, at 230km the longest of the race, between Beziers and Montelimar.
Somalia’s transitional president on Friday ruled out talks with Islamists in control of the capital, claiming they had broken an earlier agreement and planned to seize more territory. The two sides had been due to meet in Sudan on Saturday for a second round of talks aimed at resolving differences.
The United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting on Lebanon in New York on Friday, with Beirut demanding support for an immediate end to the daily Israeli air strikes on its territory. The debate began just hours after Israeli forces bombarded the command headquarters of Hezbollah in Beirut.
Ralph Ginzburg, a scandalous editor and publisher of Eros, the magazine ”of sexual candour”, who was convicted in the 1960s for sending it through the mail, has died of cancer, media reports said on Friday. Ginzburg died on Thursday at the age of 76 in New York.
Wage negotiations between the National Petroleum Employers’ Association (NPEA) and the trade union Solidarity have deadlocked, NPEA spokesperson Alfie Ngubo said in a statement. ”Although the NPEA made a settlement offer of a 6,5% wage increase on basic wages, … they were unfortunately not able to resolve the dispute,” he said.