Alastair Cook and Ian Bell both scored their second Test hundreds in as many matches as England built a commanding lead against Pakistan at Old Trafford on Friday. At stumps Pakistan were 12-0 for in their second innings, a deficit of 330, after England had declared their first innings on 461-9 with Bell 106 not out following left-hander Cook’s Test-best 127.
A Cabinet member was assassinated as he left a mosque on Friday, enraging hundreds of Somalis who rioted in the streets screaming, ”We want a government that can restore law and order!” It was the second shooting of a lawmaker this week and the latest blow to an administration that has watched helplessly as Islamic militants recently took control of the capital, Mogadishu.
A tense calm gripped the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Friday on the eve of a momentous election that could turn the page on decades of misery and misrule. Official campaigning ended at midnight to give voters a day of reflection before Sunday’s ballot, the most ambitious and expensive in Africa’s history.
Rough justice meted out to suspected Lesotho cattle rustlers — shooting dead one and cutting off the ears and a hand of each of two others — by KwaZulu-Natal stock owners was visited by 16-year jail sentences by the Pietermaritzburg High Court Friday. The stock owners were sentenced for murder, attempted murder and robbery.
The United States military said on Saturday it had captured four suspected al-Qaeda operatives in a raid on their hideout in eastern Afghanistan. There were no casualties on either side during the operation conducted early on Saturday in Sal Kalay village in Khost province near the Pakistan border, it said in a statement.
A Pretoria High Court judge on Friday in no uncertain terms said the courts were fed up with the high rate of crime and with the disregard criminals had for the life of innocent people. He warned that criminals would feel the brunt of the law. This speech, by Judge Aubrey Ledwaba, was prompted by the killing of a Brakpan couple — Phillipus Meyburg (53) and his wife Ria (39).
Internationally successful South African rock act Seether’s front man, Shaun Morgan, has entered a rehabilitation clinic, and the band have cancelled all their August appearances until further notice. Morgan has established himself as one of the leading singers in rock over the past five years.
Music television is the endangered species of the pop world, and is learning the hard way that it must adapt to the internet age, or die. Britain’s Top of the Pops, the world’s longest-running weekly music show, will be declared extinct on Sunday when it is broadcast for the last time on BBC.
An explosion at a chemical plant in eastern China killed at least 12 people on Friday and prompted the evacuation of 7 000 others, state media and officials said. Also on Friday, two unrelated explosions at another chemical plant and aboard an oil tanker injured at least five people, with two others missing and feared dead.
A United Nations human rights body told Washington on Friday that any ”secret detention” centres for terrorism suspects it operates abroad violates international law and should be shut immediately. The UN Human Rights Committee said the United States appears to have been detaining people ”secretly for months and years”.