At least 647 people were killed and 301 injured on Wednesday in a stampede in Baghdad on a bridge near a Shi’ite shrine where tens of thousands of the faithful were gathered, a security official said. Many of the dead drowned after falling off the bridge in a surge of panic triggered by rumours there were suicide bombers in the crowd.
A senior United Nations official has accused President George W Bush of “doing damage to Africa” by cutting funding for condoms.
The role of South Africa as a mediator in the lead-up to the planned October 30 elections in the Côte d’Ivoire has been successful so far, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad said on Tuesday. Pahad said Defence Minister Mosioua Lekota would report to the United Nations on Wednesday on the current state of mediation.
Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller stunned former champion Andy Roddick in New York on Tuesday, sending the fourth-seeded American packing 7-6 (7/4), 7-6 (10/8), 7-6 (7/1) in the first round of the US Open tennis championships. Muller spoiled what should have been Roddick’s 23rd birthday celebrations with a display of poise and precision.
The trials and tribulations of talented Jomo Cosmos continued at the Germiston Stadium on Wednesday afternoon when the bottom club in the Premier League table tumbled to a tense, nail-biting 2-1 defeat against Dynamos. Not even a revival in the final 30 minutes could rescue Cosmos from a third defeat at this early juncture of the season.
Eritrea’s decision to bar the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) from operating in the impoverished Horn of Africa nation is ”irreversible,” the country’s national development minister said on Wednesday. ”We are uncomfortable with the operations of the USAid office in Asmara,” said Woldai Futur.
Angola plans to begin rebuilding its roads destroyed in the 1975-2002 civil war, starting with a 300km stretch between the capital Luanda and the northern agricultural and mining province of Uige, the national road body said on Tuesday. Almost all of the country’s main roads are unusable after the war.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Tuesday expressed his satisfaction over the release of more than 400 Moroccans by the Algerian-backed Polisario Front after more than 25 years of detention. Morocco annexed the Western Sahara in 1975 but its claim was contested by the Polisario Front, sparking a conflict in the northwestern African region.
Burundi’s new President Pierre Nkurunziza on Tuesday formed the country’s first government resulting from a political transition that ended last week aimed at reconciling majority Hutus and minority Tutsis. The naming of the new government caps a five-year peace process to end the tiny central African nation’s bloody 12-year civil war.
Momentum has declared a special double-digit bonus for smoothed bonus investors for 2005. The above-average final bonus declaration comprises a basic and a special bonus. The final bonus declaration on retirement annuities invested in the Momentum traditional investment range and new-generation Investo product was 17%.