Four big terrorist attacks by locally recruited militants in three years — the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing, the 2003 bomb at the Jakarta Marriott hotel, last year’s bomb at the Australian embassy in Jakarta and last Saturday’s second Bali bombing — suggest not only incompetent security forces but something profoundly wrong with society.
While the ruling African National Congress has tried to take the vicious political battles in its midst behind closed doors, two key events this week reveal the storm beneath the calm. From the funeral of Brett Kebble in Cape Town to the first sitting of the Khampepe commission in Pretoria, the divisions and fissures in the ruling ranks were evident.
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An 11-year-old girl was allegedly made to watch acts of oral and simulated sex while spending a weekend with two Pretoria advocates in 2002, the city’s high court heard on Thursday. The girl was allegedly taken into a bathroom by the pair, where Cezanne Visser undressed and told the child to touch her breasts, according to a caregiver at the children’s home the girl attended.
Health officials were still struggling on Thursday to discover an unknown virus that claimed 16 lives at a Toronto retirement home in recent weeks, according to officials. ”We’re still trying to find the source of the outbreak,” said a spokesperson for the Toronto Public Health Authority. ”And, we may never know. In almost half of such cases the actual strain is never identified.”
A Federal Express cargo plane crashed in downtown Winnipeg on Thursday, killing the female pilot and narrowly missing nearby cars and buildings, police told Agence France Presse. The Cessna 208 was en route from Winnipeg in central Canada to Thunder Bay in neighbouring Ontario province when it went down at about 5.45am (10.45am GMT) in the trendy Osborne Village neighborhood of the city.
Australia’s pace spearhead Glenn McGrath will be rested for Friday’s Super Series limited-overs international, giving the World XI additional hope of levelling the three-match contest. McGrath complained of tightness in the legs after his seven-over opening spell on Wednesday returned 2-13 and had the World XI reeling at 50-3 chasing 256 to win.
The Balkans are home to Europe’s most inveterate smokers, where 30 to 40% of all adults are gripped by the habit — a major cause of premature death. ”People in that part of Europe smoke the most compared to the continent as a whole,” World Health Organisation director for Europe, Marc Danzon, said on the sidelines of a regional conference on smoking prevention.
A dogged French Socialist MP on Wednesday revealed that Jacques Chirac, already the most expensive president the French have had, was costing the taxpayer more than three times the official figure. For 2003, the last year for which full figures are available, Parliament voted the Elysée an annual budget of â,¬30,5m.