Jostling over governance in the Cape Town metro continued on Friday with no apparent solution imminent. The Democratic Alliance’s tenuous hold on power in the city is being threatened by the Independent Democrats’ determination to pursue its quest for changing the executive mayor system to an executive committee system.
Drive-by shootings, roadside bombings and sectarian killings left 28 dead in Iraq on Friday. American and Iraqi troops swept the oil-rich region of Kirkuk for suspected insurgents and captured dozens. A bombing outside a Sunni Muslim mosque after Friday prayers killed at least four worshippers and wounded 15.
African National Congress attempts to wrest power from a Democratic Alliance-led coalition in Cape Town bode ill for the country’s political future, DA leader Tony Leon said on Friday. ”The ANC’s behaviour raises serious and troubling questions about how that party will behave when its national majority cracks — as eventually it must,” he said in his weekly online letter.
Five people were injured when police fired rubber bullets at protesting security guards in two incidents in central Johannesburg on Friday. A police officer on the scene said they had to fire the rubber bullets after protesters hit passers-by and cars with sticks on the corner of Fox and Sauer streets. Six people were arrested.
Russian-speaking pilots sat coolly behind locked cockpit doors, unaware of the failed air conditioning in the passenger-packed cabin of their geriatric aircraft as it sat on a sun-baked African runway. Weasua Air Transport, the Liberian operator of that jet-prop aircraft, was among 92 airlines banned on Wednesday from European airspace due to safety concerns.
The British hostage, Norman Kember, and his two Canadian colleagues were free on Thursday night after a rescue mission led by the SAS into one of the most dangerous parts of Baghdad. The troops found the three tied up but unharmed. No shots were fired.
Pakistani forces using helicopter gunships killed up to 20 pro-Taliban militants near the Afghan border early on Friday after an attack on a security post left one soldier dead, officials said. The fighting in the restive district of North Waziristan came a day after President Pervez Musharraf ordered foreign al-Qaeda militants to quit Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan or be killed.
He was perhaps the finest centre-half never to play for England. The Geordie who was always destined to manage Newcastle United but turned them down in their hour of need. Steve Bruce: a career of broken dreams, broken promises and broken noses. And after Tuesday’s unacceptable 7-0 defeat against Liverpool, now the unwanted owner of a shattered reputation.
The Cape Town International Jazz Festival is set to break the genre’s mould, writes Miles Keylock.
<b>CD OF THE WEEK</b>: Listening to Vogt’s Mozart Piano <i>Sonatas and Fantasias</i>, it certainly feels as if one has stayed away from Mozart for too long, writes Lee Madeley.