Bob Geldof tells Andy Davis about moving political mountains and taming the crowd.
Rule one when going to a planned UFO sighting: don’t be too hopeful of being whisked away by giant, gently glowing, triple-breasted or amply hung aliens. Rule two: carry a handy tab of some hallucinogenic substance, in case of disappointment.
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Minister of Education Naledi Pandor on Tuesday rejected a report by the Beeld newspaper on the dropout rate in South African schools. The newspaper reported that only 21,9% of pupils who had been in grade one in 1994 wrote matric last year.
Five young men have been gunned down in a massacre on the Cape Flats, Western Cape police said on Tuesday. Two men entered the back yard of a house in Langa’s Zone 4 shortly before midnight on Monday and opened fire on a group of 10 people, all of them teenage youths or young men, in a wooden hut there.
Drug-tainted German cyclist Jan Ullrich has vowed to win the Tour de France before he retires, despite being barred from this year’s race after being implicated in a doping scandal. Ullrich, who was subsequently sacked by T-Mobile after being prevented from taking part in this year’s Tour, said he wants to add another title to set alongside his 1997 triumph in the world-famous race.
Businessman Cyril Ramaphosa has denied having any interest in becoming president of the African National Congress. ”I have not engaged, nor sought to engage others on my behalf, in any campaign with respect to the presidency of the ANC, and have no interest in being a candidate,” he said on Tuesday.
The Durban High Court on Tuesday granted Westville prison authorities leave to appeal against an order to speed up the provision of antiretrovirals (ARVs) to prisoners. The court simultaneously ordered prison authorities to provide the service pending the appeal.
The present common law definition of rape was ”archaic” and resulted in inadequate protection for victims of sodomy and discriminatory sentences, a Pretoria High Court judge has said. Judge Natvarial Ranchod on Tuesday declared the common law definition of rape unconstitutional as it currently stood and extended the definition of rape to include anal penetration.
Typhoon Kaemi struck the south-east coast of China on Tuesday, sparking the evacuation of more than 500 000 people in an area still reeling from a tropical storm that claimed more than 600 lives. The typhoon first passed over Taiwan, causing widespread disruption to daily life but not enormous damage.