The African National Congress on Sunday extended its ”warmest wishes and congratulations” to former president Nelson Mandela on his 87th birthday.
The 2005 season started with dreams of golf’s ”Big Five” fighting it out for the Majors. After three of them, reality has been restored. It’s back to the ”Big One” and the rest are reduced to scrambling for the crumbs. Tiger Woods won the Masters, could not putt to save his life but still came second in the US Open, and won the British Open with a stunning display of controlled golf.
Embattled Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has appealed to South Africa for a loan of several hundred million rands to buy fuel, food, seed, and fertiliser. According to media reports, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are preparing to call in Zimbabwe’s debt of R4,5-billion next week.
Gabriel Gomez scored the deciding goal in a penalty kick shootout here on Sunday to advance Panama past South Africa into the Concacaf Gold Cup football tournament semifinals. Panama and South Africa played to a 1-1 draw after two extra 15-minute sessions and the quarterfinal was decided in a shootout, which Panama won 5-3 to advance.
Iraq’s fledgling government stood accused of leaving its citizens defenceless on Sunday after a devastating three days of suicide attacks left at least 150 people dead and more than 260 wounded.
Israel on Sunday massed thousands of troops along the border of the Gaza Strip and warned that it would invade unless the Palestinian Authority acted to prevent the firing of missiles at Israeli towns. Israeli officials said more than 100 missiles had been fired from Gaza at Israeli targets in and outside the Gaza Strip.
The smell of scorched diesel was still discernible on the waterfront at Kusadasi on Sunday, though the road where the minibus exploded had been strewn with red and white carnations. The mid-morning blast in the popular Aegean resort — possibly the work of a suicide bomber — killed a British woman, an Irish holidaymaker and three Turks.
The secret of Harry Potter’s success lies in the continuing allure of magic and fantasy in a secular society. Gorgeous as all these playful encounters between angels and witches, shamans and talking animals clearly are, the heavy hand of prophecy always drives the most popular of these recent fantasy worlds.
The taxi industry is organised along Mafia lines, with powerful, barely accountable associations collecting massive levies to fund war chests and pay for members’ funerals, a commission of inquiry in Cape Town has heard. The probe into the underlying causes of instability and violence in the Cape Town taxi industry was set up in May after clashes over routes to the newly opened Cape Gateway Mall.
A new advertising campaign aimed at curtailing teenage HIV rates by promoting abstinence is using a combination of traditional and modern values in its appeal to Swazi youth. The SiSwati phrase "<i>Ngoba likusasa nelami</i> [because tomorrow is mine]" has been chosen as the theme of the initiative, which got under way with full-page advertisements in Swaziland’s two national newspapers.