The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) have backed down from their threatened second round of strikes after talks with the new deputy president. South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported Cosatu as saying it was however too late for Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka to stop the current round of mass action.
There may have been aspects of The Godfather, GoodFellas and, most pertinently, Donnie Brasco to the life of the Mafia boss Joe Massino, but Friday’s courthouse scene in Brooklyn was strictly B-movie. The paunchy 62-year-old gruffly pleaded guilty to the murder of a subordinate and, in doing so, accepted a life sentence.
With a glazed look in her eyes, the bored production line worker dips her hand into a bag full of short and curlies, peels off a strip of double-sided transparent tape and applies the furry finishing touch to a plastic vagina. On the table behind, three young migrant workers from Hubei province are a picture of tedium as they fix studs and chains on a red rubber bondage outfit.
He lived and died in the world of gangsta rap, and the identity of his killer remains one of the most enduring and bloody mysteries in the music industry. The Notorious BIG was gunned down at traffic lights in Los Angeles, and since then theories about who pulled the trigger and why have tormented his family.
Six months after the tsunami struck, little remains of the village of Navalady built on a narrow finger of sand extending into the Indian Ocean on Sri Lanka’s east coast. Debris lies in piles on the beach and the road through the village, washed out by the waves, has not been repaired.
The African Union on Friday rejected calls by Britain and the United States to intervene in Zimbabwe, where the president, Robert Mugabe, is conducting a slum clearance programme that has left hundreds of thousands homeless.
The loyalty of the overwhelming majority of South Africans to the Freedom Charter’s vision has made the country what it is today, which many have described as a miracle, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday. Mbeki painted a moving picture of the Freedom Charter — the 50th anniversary of which is to be commemorated at Kliptown on Sunday.
Marat Safin’s latest attempt to conquer Wimbledon ended in bitter disappointment and frustration on Friday when he was knocked out in the third round by Spanish serve-and-volleyer Felciano Lopez. The fifth-seeded Russian meekly surrendered the Court One tie to the man who beat him at the Olympics last year.
Saddam Hussein’s family will publish next week a novel written by the ousted Iraqi leader before the US-led war on Iraq, his daughter said on Friday. Ekhroj minha ya mal’un, whose title could be translated into ”Get out, damned one” is a metaphor for a Zionist-Christian plot against Arabs and Muslims.
All Chinese-run websites that fail to register with telecommunications authorities before June 30 will be temporarily closed down, state media said on Friday. The announcement was made on Friday by the Ministry of Information Industry in a bid ”to control domestic internet information services,” the Xinhua news agency said.