With 12 months to go until the 2006 World Cup, football fans will have an early taste of what to expect when the Confederations Cup starts in Germany on Wednesday. For Germany coach Jurgen Klinsmann’s team and the World Cup organising committee the competition serves as a dress rehearsal for the main event.
Patricia de Lille’s Independent Democrats (ID) party announced on Monday that Democratic Alliance (DA) councillor Mervyn Cirota had resigned from the official opposition to join the ID. Cirota said the DA had created the perception that its policies were ”separate and contrary to the ideals of the majority of South Africans”.
The United States has imposed sanctions on Israel after a dispute over Israel’s sale of drones — unmanned aerial vehicles — to China, according to news reports. The US has suspended co-operation on several development projects and frozen delivery of night-vision equipment.
The concept of willing-buyer, willing-seller has been underscored by Minister of Agriculture and Land Thoko Didiza in reply to a question about government’s target of 30% of white agricultural land being redistributed to black farmers by 2015.
The elderly man in the dark green tinted glasses looked intently into his cup, took a small sip of the treacle-like coffee, glanced around the room and then began to whisper in his rich Latino accent: ”Luis Posada Carriles. He is a very good guy. Super guy. He is a good friend. The CIA and the government, maybe they will do the right thing and help him out.”
Team chief Ron Dennis was angry and happy at the same time on Sunday night as he celebrated Kimi Raikkonen’s victory for McLaren in the Canadian Grand Prix and disputed the disqualification of his team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya. For Raikkonen, who saw Alonso crash out while running at the front, it was some consolation for suffering a similar fate in the previous race at the European Grand Prix.
It is still unclear when President Thabo Mbeki will announce the fate of his deputy, Jacob Zuma, who has been implicated in corruption. ”I am as in the dark as you are,” said presidential spokesperson Bheki Khumalo on Sunday, asked when Mbeki was expected to make an announcement.
Explosions in Tehran and southern Iran killed at least nine people and injured 70 on Sunday in attacks apparently aimed at disrupting this week’s presidential elections. A small bomb concealed in a rubbish container exploded in central Tehran, killing at least one person and wounding three, officials said.
Africa’s last absolute monarch, King Mswati III, has married another teenage bride who has become his 12th wife, a newspaper report said on Sunday, less than a month after secretly taking another young woman. This time round the king secretly married Nothando Dube (18) on Saturday, the Times of Swaziland reported.
A French journalist was flown back to Paris on Sunday night after being held hostage for five months by insurgents in Iraq. Florence Aubenas (44) was greeted by President Jacques Chirac, her friends and family at the Villacoublay airport, outside Paris.