More than 100 000 knives, including machetes, meat cleavers and axes, were handed over to police during Britain’s five-week knife amnesty which ended last month, the country’s Home Office said on Friday. Another 12 645 were handed over in Scotland.
Meerkats actively teach their young how to catch and eat their prey, British researchers said in a study that is one of the first to prove that animals show such complex behaviour. While animals are known to learn from one another by watching, the team at Britain’s University of Cambridge said they had demonstrated that the animals actually teach, as defined by clear principles.
A North West woman said armed men attacked and tortured her family, pouring boiling water on her husband, slashing open his forehead, then strangling him with a shoelace. The family, from Swartruggens near Rustenburg, were attacked on Wednesday night, media reports said on Friday.
United States President George Bush was expected to press President Vladimir Putin at a weekend G8 summit over concerns the Russian leader is reining in the rights of the country’s opposition and media. Pledging to ”continually remind Russia” that good ties with the West depend on sharing common democratic values, Bush was due to arrive in St Petersburg from Germany on Friday.
Sri Lanka’s navy rained mortar shells on Tamil rebel positions in the island’s restive east on Friday, after suspected snipers killed one sailor and injured another as sporadic attacks raise fears of renewed war. The Tamil Tiger rebels said none of their fighters were killed by the mortars, but said they clashed with an army unit in their territory in the eastern district of Batticaloa,
Israel bombed the offices of Hamas lawmakers, destroyed a bridge and fired a tank shell that killed one Palestinian on Friday as part of a Gaza Strip offensive aimed at forcing militants to release a captured soldier. Israeli forces withdrew overnight from central Gaza after two days of fighting, and an army statement said the troops had ”currently completed their activities in the area”.
The World Cup was an absorbing diversion from the bad news that dominates our attention. Despite the manic nationalism and its inherent tribalism, part of the naive beauty of the past weeks has been the sense that for once the human race was looking in the same direction.
When Manchester United were last in South Africa, in 1993, the club were on a high. A campaign driven by Eric Cantona had seen them crowned inaugural Premier League winners — their first English top division title in 26 years. They then lost to Arsenal at Ellis Park in a match marred by referee Errol Sweeney’s dismissal of United skipper Bryan Robson.
When the novelty of astronauts on Mars begins to wear off, some time in 2020, historians will note that it took humanity 120 years to wobble into the air in a Kitty Hawk, go faster than sound, ride into space, walk on the moon and begin colonising the red planet.
South Africa’s ruling African National Congress had initially stopped glorifying politicians in place names — like airports — but had now turned the clock back to the days of the National Party (NP) with the proposed renaming of the Johannesburg International airport, said official opposition Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon in his weekly internet column <i>SA Today</i> on Friday.