Joseph Kabila, the interim president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has shot himself in the foot with the coup-plot fiasco he engineered two weeks ago. Internationally he has infuriated two of his principal backers — South Africa and the United States — by unjustifiably holding 22 of their nationals for 10 days.
Uriah Maleka (83), a founder member of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) and former representative of the African National Congress in Angola, has died after suffering a mild stroke. Maleka’s son Tito confirmed that his father died on Saturday morning at the South Rand clinic in Johannesburg.
South African businessman and political activist Eric Molobi has died aged 58 after a battle with cancer, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Sunday. Born on June 5 1947, Molobi was imprisoned on Robben Island during the apartheid era. While in prison he obtained a bachelor’s degree.
Director Shohei Imamura, who portrayed modern Japan’s downtrodden in raw realism and eroticism and became the first Japanese to win the prestigious Palme d’Or at Cannes twice, died of cancer in Tokyo on Tuesday. He was 79. Imamura was often considered the top Japanese director since the late Akira Kurosawa.
Edouard Michelin (43), who drowned on Friday in a boating accident, was hailed as a rising French business figure, having helped turn round the fortunes of his family tyre company at a young age. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said he was one of the ”rising figures” of the French economy.
Vince Welnick, the Grateful Dead’s last keyboard player and a veteran of several other bands, including the Tubes and Missing Man Formation, has died at age 55, the Grateful Dead’s long-time publicist said. Welnick died on Friday, said Dennis McNally, who declined to release the cause.
A military transport plane carrying 40 people crashed in eastern China’s Anhui province on Saturday, the government said on Sunday. A local official said at least five people were killed. Villagers described a chaotic crash scene, with bodies and body parts strewn across a mountain slope where the plane crashed and burned.
Two of eight Western oil workers abducted by armed militants off a drilling platform in southern Nigeria were freed early on Sunday, but the other six are still being held, the president’s office said. ”Only two have been released so far according to the negotiation team,” presidential spokesperson Remi Oyo said.
Five people were killed and 24 others injured when a freight train rear-ended a passenger train on Saturday in southern Zimbabwe, state television reported. ”The derailment occurred after a goods train that was travelling from Rutenga to Gweru rammed into the back of a passenger train,” the broadcaster said.
Janice Josephs, South African national record holder in the heptathlon, occupied fourth place after the first day of the annual international combined events meeting in Arles, France, with a total of 3 612 points. She trails leader Jessica Zelinka of Canada by 153 points after the first four events.