Protesting security guards have threatened to disrupt next week’s Freedom Day celebrations at Pretoria’s Union Buildings if their 11% wage demand is not met. ”We are saying there can be no Freedom Day celebrations while there are people who are oppressed,” said Jackson Simon, security coordinator at the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu).
The Western Force led for most of the match and had a late try disallowed to draw with the first-place Canterbury Crusaders 23-23 in a Super 14 rugby match on Friday. Playing the final home game of their inaugural season before 30 000 spectators at Subiaco Oval, the Force had a try by Haig Sare disallowed with three minutes left.
Nepal’s King Gyanendra caved in Friday after two weeks of pro-democracy protests and asked the opposition to name a new prime minister in a speech to the nation. ”We return the executive power of the country to the people,” he said on state-owned Nepal television.
The arrest of suspected rightists in connection with the brutal beating of an Ethiopian-born German citizen is fuelling fears that neo-Nazi violence could overshadow the football World Cup being held in Germany. Germany’s federal prosecutor said the attack, which left the 37-year-old father of two in a coma, had probably been carried out due to ”hatred towards foreigners”.
A crack in a dyke on a swollen river in south-eastern Hungary has forced 4 500 people to evacuate their homes, Tibor Dobson, spokesperson for the national disaster prevention agency, said on Friday. The evacuations were taking place in the towns of Csepa, Szeleveny and Tiszasas in Jasz-Nagykun-Szolnok county, along the river Koros.
The United States will provide an additional -million in humanitarian aid to Ethiopia to alleviate the effects of prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa country. Michael Hess, assistant administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said on Thursday that the additional funding included -million in food aid and ,3-million in non-food aid.
Police opened fire with rubber bullets on protesters against municipal boundary changes who had broken away from a dispersing crowd at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on Friday. Earlier, about five or six small groups, from a few hundred protesters, set patches of the Union Buildings’ lawns alight.
South Africans will not be getting access to explicit pornographic television channels soon if a Pretoria High Court judge has his way. Judge Ben du Plessis on Friday turned down an application by a Pretoria company, OtherChoice, to legalise the distribution of its smart cards, which give access to pornographic programmes.
Romania has ruptured a dyke on the River Danube to save homes elsewhere from floods and launched a 24-hour watch on the bulging embankments during Orthodox Easter as the swollen Danube menaced scores of villages and towns across south-eastern Europe.
South Africa’s Stormers scored three tries in three minutes in the second half on Friday to beat the Queensland Reds 24-20 in a Super 14 rugby match. Rodney Blake and Drew Mitchell scored first-half tries as the Reds led 13-3 at half-time, but the Stormers’ second-half burst of 21 points put the visitors ahead for good.