He has been called the ”poet laureate of pessimism”. His songs, delivered in a slow, haunting monotone, tell of death, betrayal and depression. Now, earthly matters have caught up with Leonard Cohen: his manager, he alleges, has spent all his money.
Gauteng community safety MEC Firoz Cachalia urged Eldorado Park residents to stay calm on Friday and let police investigate the disappearance of a six-year-old girl who was later found murdered. He made his appeal in response to their outrage at the police’s alleged tardiness in handling the case.
Former All Blacks centre Keith Lowen has switched colours to South Africa, announcing on Saturday he had signed with the Central Cheetahs for next year’s expanded Super 14 southern hemisphere rugby championship. The long-serving Waikato Chiefs Super 12 player, and one-Test All Black against England in 2002, said he had signed a one-year deal with the new South African franchise.
World XI coach John Wright on Saturday defended the concept of the best cricket team versus the rest of the world in the face of two heavy one-day defeats by his team against Australia. The International Cricket Council invested heavily in the Super Series of three one-dayers and a Test match, pitting the best players in the world against the world’s top one-day and Test team Australia.
Prosecutors in Sicily opened a criminal investigation on Friday following the publication of a horrific account by a journalist who disguised himself as an illegal immigrant and spent a week in detention.
Fears that the deadly Asian bird flu may have spread to Europe were heightened on Friday when the Romanian government confirmed that three ducks have died of a strain of the disease in the east of the country.
George Weah has been on the campaign trail for weeks, and the retired footballer who would be president of war-ravaged Liberia looks exhausted. The convoy of four-wheel-drive cars tells the story of the journey. After setting out from the capital Monrovia last Friday with 32 vehicles, his campaign team bumped back towards the city on Friday in just five mud-spattered cars.
A massive earthquake is feared to have killed more than 1 000 people in Pakistan on Saturday, said chief military spokesperson Major General Shaukat Sultan. ”The death toll could be more than 1 000. There could be massive casualties but we do not have exact numbers,” Sultan said from the capital Islamabad.
An earthquake measuring at least 7,6 on the Richter scale caused massive devastation on Saturday across a swathe of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. The confirmed death toll in the earthquake has passed 1 000, officials said. In Pakistan’s North West Frontier province alone, the toll is above 550.
About 1 400 people were killed by a mudslide in the Guatemalan highland village of Panabaj that had been triggered by torrential rains from Hurricane Stan, Reuters reported on Saturday. The latest figure would bring to almost 2 000 the total number of people killed by the storm.