Australian skipper Ricky Ponting won his second successive toss and decided to bat in the second Super Series cricket one-dayer against a World XI at Docklands stadium in Melbourne on Friday. The world team, which must win to keep the series alive after losing the opening game by 93 runs on Wednesday, was unchanged but made West Indian Chris Gayle its super sub replacing Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi.
Gunmen riding motorcycles opened fire on worshippers from a minority Muslim sect at a mosque in Pakistan Friday, killing at least eight people and wounding 12, a security official and police said. Three attackers sprayed the dawn prayer session marking the second day of Ramadan in Mong village, part of Mandi Bahauddin town, 100km south of the capital Islamabad.
Brett Kebble’s funeral was reminiscent of the Eighties. With the flag-draped coffin, the national anthem reverberating through St George’s Cathedral and a guard of honour by the African National Congress Youth League, his life ended in a struggle send-off.
The late Brett Kebble’s mining empire may end up in the knacker’s yard, according to analysts who have been following it closely. ”My sense is that JCI and Randgold & Exploration [two Kebble-controlled companies] won’t exist in their present form a year from now,” says Georges Lequime, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets in London.
If Liberia had a lightbulb for everyone who has promised electricity as part of its reconstruction, the capital Monrovia would be lit up like Las Vegas, and not wreathed in perpetual darkness. As the electoral campaign for October 11 polls winds down, presidential candidates are stepping up their promises, committing to bring current and running water to the roughly one million residents.
Saxophonist Robbie Jansen is as close as one gets to being a specialist and he has been nicknamed the Cape Doctor because he blows like Cape Town’s wretched southeaster, writes Julian Jonker.
The moral and political imperatives underpinning transformation, affirmative action and black empowerment are eroded by those who use these as smokescreens to pursue their selfish interests, writes Mike van Graan.
Thanks to a British television competition South Africa’s Rachel Zadok has had her novel, <i>Gem Squash Tokoloshe</i>, published by Pan Macmillan in the United Kingdom. Irene Madonko reports.
Tropical Storm Stan left a trail of devastation across Central America and Mexico, killing at least 225 people and forcing 225Â 000 others from their homes after unleashing five days of relentless downpours, authorities said on Thursday. The death toll in Guatemala surged late on Thursday to 134 after a mudslide killed 55 farmers.
New details have emerged of an abortive Angolan diamond deal involving Brett Kebble and Dali Tambo that has left some of their Angolan partners high and dry — including a powerful former head of Angolan military intelligence. The saga around the bid for a potentially lucrative alluvial mining licence provides an example of how Kebble accumulated powerful enemies.