Hamas has made a major political climbdown by agreeing to sections of a document that recognises Israel’s right to exist and a negotiated two-state solution, according to Palestinian leaders. In a bitter struggle for power, Hamas is bowing to an ultimatum from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to endorse the document drawn up by Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails.
An angry George W Bush rounded on the two remaining members of Washington’s ”axis of evil” recently, as he dismissed ”absurd” suggestions that the United States presents the greatest threat to world stability. At a summit with the European Union in Vienna, President Bush made it clear that he believes that Iran and North Korea pose the most serious danger when he warned them not to test his patience.
Bush administration officials like to describe Iran as a country isolated from the outside world. Its outlaw government’s policies, and especially its nuclear activities, have earned it the distrust of the international community, the fear of its neighbours and, they say, the rightful label of a ”rogue state”.
A Zimbabwean court on Monday moved the trial of an ex-Rhodesian soldier accused of masterminding a plot to topple President Robert Mugabe to the eastern city of Mutare. Peter Hitschmann was arrested in early March along with seven others including an opposition parliamentarian after police said that an arms cache had been found in his home in Mutare.
An al-Qaeda-linked group posted a web video on Sunday showing the graphic killings of three Russian embassy workers abducted earlier this month in Iraq. The one-and-a-half-minute video, posted on an Islamic website, shows two blindfolded men beheaded and the shooting of a third man.
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David Beckham scored with a free kick in the 60th minute on Sunday to lead England to a 1-0 win over Ecuador and a spot in the quarterfinals of the World Cup. Beckham sent in a curling free kick from about 25m that beat diving goalkeeper Christian Mora.
A shootout in Jeppestown, Johannesburg, on Sunday ended in what was described as a bloodbath with four police officers and eight suspects killed. An emotional Gauteng provincial Commissioner Perumal Naidoo told reporters at the scene that ”four policemen had lost their lives in the line of duty”.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will offer an amnesty to some rebel groups and call for the disarmament of militias as part of a 28-point national reconciliation plan to stem violence, a lawmaker said on Saturday. The plan, first mentioned by al-Maliki on June 6, was inspired by post-apartheid South Africa.
Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Saturday accepted his nomination by the leftist Worker’s Party (PT) to run for a second term in October elections. ”I’m here today to tell you that the dream has not ended and that hope has not died,” Lula (60) said at a national PT convention in Brasilia.
The chasm between Super 14 experience and Vodacom Cup rugby was further exposed when defending champions the Cheetahs hammered Griquas 55-14 in a one-sided opening Currie Cup encounter played in Bloemfontein on Saturday. The Cheetahs surprisingly won the Currie Cup last year.