Former South African president FW de Klerk was on Friday being gradually taken off a ventilator following respiratory problems after an operation to remove a cancerous tumour, his spokesperson said. ”He is responding well to treatment. He is being taken off sedation and being weaned off the ventilator and gradually starting to breathe himself,” David Steward said.
The United Nations appealed for millions of dollars in aid on Friday to help combat possible food shortages in the desert nation of Mauritania. The UN World Food Programme said in a statement its relief operation there "is facing a complete break in supplies at the end of July — exactly the time of year when food needs are at their annual peak".
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Arsenal’s Freddie Ljungberg fired Sweden to the brink of the second phase of the World Cup on Thursday, his late header sending Paraguay home in a 1-0 win. Sweden now face compatriot Sven-Goran Eriksson’s England on Tuesday as they bid to win Group B with either hosts Germany or Ecuador waiting in the next round.
A blistering afternoon at the Amahouro stadium in Kigali last October and deep into the second half Angola seem powerless to break the deadlock against Rwanda in the final game of their World Cup qualifying campaign. Angola need to match Nigeria’s victory against Zimbabwe, a 5-1 success that finished slightly earlier, to ensure an improbable berth in the finals for the first time.
Colin Montgomerie was the only player to pass golf’s toughest test in the red colours on Thursday, as his one-under 69 gave him the first-round lead in the 2006 US Open. Montgomerie’s was the only under-par effort on a day when a wind-blown Winged Foot humbled a host of top players, including Tiger Woods.
In the early summer of 2006 the Spanish government confirmed that it was considering regarding the great apes as ”legal persons”, thereby bestowing on them all the rights known at that time as human.
Fresh conflict is boiling between the council and management of South Africa’s communications regu-lator, as the regulator pushes ahead with disciplinary action against its suspended CEO. Icasa suspended Manche on November 24 last year after the disappearance of cash from an Icasa safe and a dispute over vehicle purchases.
Ousted former African National Congress mayors and councillors in the North West have been accused of infiltrating the South African National Civic Organisation as a way of getting back at the ANC. But the allegations, made in a Sanco document sent to the ANC for response, also indicate deep divisions within the civic organisation.
A recently released report by Amnesty International says Norinco 9mm pistols, which are cheaply manufactured in China, are commonly used in cases of robbery, rape and other crimes in South Africa. The report notes that, despite South Africa’s stringent Firearms Control Act of 2000, firearms are filtering into the underworld after being lost or stolen.
At least 19 people were killed across Iraq on Friday, including 11 in Baghdad when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a massive Shi’ite mosque despite a security crackdown in the capital, police said. The blast, which also wounded 25 people, came just an hour before the main weekly Muslim prayers.