The fourth and final Test between England and Pakistan at The Oval was sensationally abandoned on Sunday after an ugly row over ball tampering. The decision that Pakistan should forfeit the game in such circumstances was unprecedented in the 129-year-history of Test cricket.
Embattled Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi on Monday appointed a new, scaled-down Cabinet to replace a dissent-riddled government dissolved earlier this month. Gedi named the 31-strong slate as tensions rose anew between his weak transitional administration and Somalia’s newly dominant Islamists.
South Africa’s health minister on Sunday defended her HIV/Aids policies after a blistering attack by a top United Nations official, but newspapers said she had made the country a laughing stock and demanded her resignation. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang blamed South Africa’s poor media coverage at last week’s global Aids conference in Toronto on the Treatment Action Campaign.
Congolese President Joseph Kabila’s guards fought gun battles with forces loyal to election challenger Jean-Pierre Bemba in the capital Kinshasa on Sunday, as poll results showed the two would have to enter a run-off. Kabila, with 44,81%, and Bemba with 20,03% of votes from the historic July 30 election, will face each other in a second round.
Tensions between Iran and the West have rarely been greater than they are today. On the one side, United States President George Bush has accused Iran of being behind the attack by Hezbollah on Israel that sparked the Lebanon war; and both the US and Britain say that Iran is bent on developing nuclear weapons.
When the guns went silent in Aitta Shaab, a war-ravaged village close to the Israeli border, three children skipped through the rubble looking for a little fun. Hurdling over lumps of crushed concrete and dodging spikes of twisted metal, Sukna, Hassan and Merwa, aged 10 to 12, paused before a curious object.
Hillary Clinton is finally gaining a toehold with voters in the United States, according to a new poll that puts her almost at level pegging for the presidency with the current Republican favourite, John McCain. Months of polls have suggested the New York senator would lose the 2008 White House race badly if she won the Democratic nomination.
One of South Africa’s most decorated investigative journalists, Barry Sergeant, talks to us about his controversial new book <i>Brett Kebble – The Inside Story</i>.
Howard Thomas considers the peculiarities around translating sub-titles.
Matthew Buckland on the online trend where every man and his blog are joining in on the writing game.