Australian jazz and pop sensation Missy Higgins is on tour in South Africa. Lloyd Gedye caught up with her to chat about her meteoric rise to fame
Shaun de Waal paints a picture of Lewis Nkosi from an interview and a collection of essays by and about the writer.
A growing army of ragga lovers is pushing the music into the mainstream, writes Percy Zvomuya.
<b>MOVIE OF THE WEEK:</b> Director Bryan Singer has managed to make the usual Superman superheroics, in <i>Superman Returns</i> feel fresh, and the computer-generated imagery is superb, writes Shaun de Waal.
South African President Thabo Mbeki led the tributes to Percy Sonn, who was named as the new president of the International Cricket Council (ICC) on Friday. ”The ICC was the first international sports body to recognise a democratic South Africa through the membership of the United Cricket Board of South Africa in 1991,” said Mbeki.
The FBI uncovered a plot to bomb New York’s Holland Tunnel, subways and other tunnels by Muslim extremists, one of whom has been arrested in Beirut, The Daily News reported on Friday. The daily said the terrorists hoped to flood lower Manhattan’s financial district.
The South African Chamber of Business says although the announcement of a proposed fuel levy to be implemented in the Western Cape comes as no surprise, the timing of the announcement by the region’s Transport MEC is ”unfortunate.” The figure of the proposed fuel levy has not yet been announced, although sources have suggested figures of between 10 and 50 cents per litre.
Britain fell silent for two minutes on Friday in memory of the victims of the London bombings, as its top police officer warned that the threat of more outrages has ”palpably increased” in the year since then. It was the worst terrorist to date attack on British soil, as well as Europe’s first experience with a suicide bombing.
While South Africa will urge North Korea to stop its missile testing, it is not convinced that United Nations Security Council action is the best way to solve the crisis, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said on Friday. He said the issue will be on the agenda for a meeting on Tuesday with his North Korean counterpart.
A former Rwandan mayor convicted for the country’s 1994 genocide saw his 30-year sentence boosted to life in prison on Friday, as a United Nations-backed court rejected his appeal, accusing him of ”sadism”. Appeals judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda said the term handed down in June 2004 to Sylvestre Gacumbitsi had been too lenient.