All prisoners on death row should be released, the South African Prisoners’ Organisation for Human Rights (Sapohr) said on Friday. ”After all, the majority of them have been behind bars for such a long time, they virtually have no life to fall back to,” said Golden Miles Bhudu, president of Sapohr.
Preventative measures have been taken to supply Johannesburg residents with gas until the Sasolburg plant is fully operational, Egoli Gas said on Friday. Sasol warned earlier on Friday that Johannesburg residents who use hydrogen gas could be left without gas for three weeks due to technical problems at the Sasolburg plant.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said on Friday that his party is considering amending the country’s Constitution to make it easier for the government to take over land owned by the country’s former white farmers. He told a meeting of his ruling Zanu-PF that the government’s five-year-old land reform lacks finality.
The two old men apparently declared they were soldiers, and the story they told when they emerged from the dense jungle of a Philippine island was on Friday the talk of the nation for which they claimed to have fought. According to reports, they had been hiding on the island of Mindanao since before the end of World War II.
An Australian tourist was sentenced to 20 years in jail on Friday for trying to smuggle more than 4kg of marijuana into the Indonesian holiday island of Bali, concluding a trial that has gripped her country. Her plight has galvanised Australia into an unprecedented outpouring of public sympathy for an alleged drug smuggler.
One of the most divisive campaigns in France’s recent political history drew to a close on Friday night as the country contemplated the enormity of its intention — clearly signalled in a string of opinion polls — to reject the European Constitution treaty. Two final surveys putting the no vote at between 52% and 55%.
Police began efforts on Saturday to identify the remains of a suspected suicide bomber who attacked a popular Muslim shrine near the official residence of Pakistan’s prime minister, killing at least 20 people and wounding scores more, an official said. Friday’s blast ripped through hundreds of mainly Shi’ite worshippers.
A call by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) that steps be taken to weaken the rand has met with mixed reaction from economists. The call, coupled with a softer euro, saw the rand break above R6,60 per dollar for the first time in more than seven months on Thursday afternoon.
The world’s largest diamond-miner, De Beers, and Angola diamond-mining parastatal Empresa de Diamantes de Angola (Endiama) on Friday concluded a new agreement, four years after a contractual dispute saw the two parties’ relationship break down. The agreement became effective on Friday.
Spain’s Rafael Nadal won the battle of the boy wonders in the French Open on Friday, dispatching home hope Richard Gasquet in straight sets to reach the last 16. The fourth seed won comfortably 6-4, 6-3, 6-2 to set up a tie against either France’s Sebastien Grosjean or Radek Stepanek of the Czech Republic