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.
The worst thing about having old friends is that they go and die on you. When they do, strands of a web of common experience die with them. You also lose what might be called the shorthand of your friendship; how you could talk to each other without ever having to explain why, what or wherefore.
Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula came to rare prominence two weeks ago when he controversially suggested persistent whingers about crime should leave the country. <i>Mail & Guardian</i> reporter Fikile Ntsikelelo Moya quizzed the largely invisible minister on his statement, and on crime and policing more generally.
Sri Lanka’s president vowed on Friday not to allow the killing of 64 bus passengers derail the island’s peace process as the air force bombarded Tamil Tiger positions for a second straight day. President Mahinda Rajapakse insited the Norwegian-brokered process would not be allowed to collapse following Thursday’s Claymore mine attack on the bus.
After a nine-week absence from professional golf, during which his status as the man-to-beat at Major championships has been challenged by Phil Mickelson, he was the best man at his caddie’s wedding and he buried his beloved father, Tiger Woods is back. But it was a close-run thing.
The joint head of European Aeronautic Defence and Space (EADS) rejected on Friday suggestions he had indulged in insider trading knowing the group would announce delivery delays for the Airbus superjumbo which have slashed the value of the business.
Islamic militias secured the backing of influential clan elders overnight to set up a new system of governance for swathes of southern Somalia, which the Islamists now control, an elder said on Friday. Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the head of the Joint Islamic Courts militia, sealed a deal with the traditional community leaders in Jowhar.
Tim Cahill and Lucas Neill shunned the in-flight movies on the Socceroos’ 24-hour flight from Melbourne to their training camp near Eindhoven before the World Cup. Instead, the Everton midfielder played computer football games with his long-time friend, the Blackburn Rovers defender.
When Joe Cole shook hands with Shaka Hislop before the kick-off in Nuremberg on Thursday he thought back to the time, getting on for a decade ago, when they were teammates at Upton Park and the Trinidad & Tobago goalkeeper, already an experienced professional, helped to ease the English prodigy’s youthful anxieties.
Rugby, it seems, is continually in the wars, if not for misadministration then for poor results. The latest piece of idiocy presented itself in the form of the meeting between the South African administrators and MPs. In our second decade since the unification of sporting codes and our shiny new democracy, the progress made in racial integration in the sport is shameful.