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/ 29 December 2005
The shock of seeing his brother murdered caused evil spirits to enter the body of alleged housebreaker Nkululeko Tuntubele, the Cape Town Regional Court heard on Wednesday. The evil spirits had a major impact on his client’s physical condition, defence lawyer Asghar Mia told the court.
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/ 29 December 2005
Australia set South Africa a historically-challenging 366 runs to win the second cricket Test after extraordinary batting fireworks by Matthew Hayden and Andrew Symonds at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Thursday. The two Queenslanders hammered a rapid-fire 124-run partnership in 66 minutes off 93 balls to set up a declaration at 321 for seven 40 minutes before tea on the fourth day.
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/ 29 December 2005
A key defendant in the Enron prosecution on Wednesday agreed a last-minute plea deal, potentially worsening the outlook for his former bosses Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling who are due to face criminal trial next month. Richard Causey, the former chief accountant at the bankrupt energy group, pleaded guilty to a single charge of securities fraud in exchange for a seven-year sentence.
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/ 29 December 2005
South Africa has deported about 200 illegal Zimbabweans by chartered plane this week, an official said, in a move believed to have been prompted by the unavailability of bus and rail transport over the festive season. South Africa deports between 600 and 6Â 000 Zimbabweans every week from the Lindela repatriation centre west of Johannesburg.
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/ 29 December 2005
British diplomats secretly discussed the idea of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussen undergoing a back operation in Britain 30 years ago, official files released on Thursday showed. When the notion was floated in 1975, Saddam was considered a key figure in the Arab world worth courting and not the international pariah he later became.
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/ 29 December 2005
Britain is preparing to launch a crackdown on prostitution in the New Year because the trade harms communities and supports drug dealers and abusers, the Home Office said on Wednesday. A prostitutes’ group warned, however, that the new zero-tolerance campaign would put the girls and women involved in even greater danger by pushing the industry further underground.
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/ 29 December 2005
War-divided Côte d’Ivoire announced a 32-member unity government that includes rebel, opposition party and ruling party ministers and represents a rare firm step toward reconciliation. Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny, named earlier this month after mediators persuaded both warring sides to accept him, chose the Cabinet, which was announced by President Laurent Gbagbo’s office.
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/ 29 December 2005
Business was booming, said Hassan Saidzada, the manager of a watch shop in Kabul’s glitziest shopping centre. Cabinet ministers, jihadi commanders and newly made tycoons were flocking in again, he boasted, waving a hand across a softly lit display of sparkling Swiss watches.
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/ 28 December 2005
When Philimon Banda fell ill last year in his small village on the edge of Lake Mweru in northern Zambia, he went to 15 local witchdoctors who all told him he had been possessed. One said he had a snake in his body drinking his blood, another that he had been inhabited by a ghost, a third that he had been bewitched by jealous neighbours.
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/ 28 December 2005
A former Chinese Cabinet minister was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday in a high-level bribery case that has exposed rampant corruption in the country’s profit-oriented dictatorship. The highest level bribery trial in four years was hailed by the state-controlled media as a sign that the authorities were cracking down on influence-peddling and illegal land transfers.