<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=zuma_report"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/243078/zuma.jpg" align=left border=0></a>President Thabo Mbeki has bluntly given his support to a Congress of South African Trade Union campaign to protect former deputy president Jacob Zuma, and pledged on Friday to unite "the entirely of our movement in a determined offensive" to defeat any conspiracy to discredit him.
Oil prices slipped on Friday, a day after its record-setting session, as Hurricane Katrina spared refineries in the Gulf of Mexico and made landfall on Florida’s coast, easing fears of supply disruptions for the time being. However, the world’s limited excess capacity to offset any unscheduled outages continues to be at the pricing forefront.
Residents of flood-stricken parts of Switzerland continued to suffer on Friday from the aftermath of a weeklong crisis that left at least six people dead or missing. About 400 inhabitants of the town of Brienz and a nearby village were evacuated overnight amid fears of a further landslide.
The Inkatha Freedom Party did not breach election regulations by handing out stationery with its logo to schools in the Zululand region, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) said on Friday. ”What is at stake is whether the party was in breach of the Department of Education’s regulations and policies,” said the IEC.
The African Christian Democratic Party is shocked by suggestions from the tripartite alliance that the state must fund axed deputy president Jacob Zuma’s legal costs for his corruption case. The alliance urged Zuma’s lawyer on Thursday to ask the state to fund his legal costs.
Australia is about to sever a yet another historical link with Britain. It will abandon Greenwich Mean Time and adopt a new national standard next week, based on the atomic clock. ”Really, GMT is just a little bit outmoded,” said Richard Britain of Australia’s National Measurement Institute.
Forget the sweet scent of roses — Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens was suffused with an unusual stench on Friday, as the gardens’ foul-smelling tongue orchid flowered for the second time in 30 years. The Papua New Guinea native orchid is one of a several plants with flowers that smell like rotting meat to attract flies, which help its pollination.
Texas is preparing to execute the first black woman in the state since the American civil war — drawing protests from her supporters and opponents of the United States death penalty. Frances Newton (40) was convicted of murdering her husband and two children in 1987 for a 000 insurance payout.
The urge of people in the developing world to heap scorn and spleen upon those in the developed is a curious one. In fact, to come across a young man living in a house made of goat dysentery, who spends his days in quivering prayer to a vengeful god (whose divine bipolar disorder ordains everything from thunderstorms to sexually transmitted diseases).
I cannot hope to contribute in any meaningful sense to the roars and squeals of disparagement already heaped on poor Zwelinzima Vavi’s head; payback with interest for the blunt demands he issued recently on behalf of Congress of Stupendously Asinine Trade Unionists (Cosatu).