Police in the western English village of Lyneham said on Friday they were investigating complaints made over an article entitled ”Pope Snuffs It” on a spoof village website. The website — www.lynehamvillage.co.uk — ran a story that began with: ”Fancy a new job?? The Vatican is now looking for a new Pope now that the current one has snuffed it”.
The husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco, Prince Ernst August, was in intensive care in a Monaco hospital on Friday suffering from an inflamed pancreas, palace insiders said, as the statelet prepared to bury Caroline’s father Prince Rainier. The German prince, who is 51, has been in the Princess Grace hospital since Monday, two days before Rainier died at the age of 81.
Will the promise of 1994 be carried forward into our second decade of democracy, or will we be overwhelmed by the crises of poverty and inequality? This is the central question the South African Communist Party will debate at its special national congress in Durban this weekend. In the recent past the SACP has tried to avoid two particular temptations, writes Jeremy Cronin.
The requiem Mass for Pope John Paul II ended on Friday at 12.30pm, drawing lengthy applause from the huge throng of mourners and state leaders massed on St Peter’s Square. As the coffin was borne aloft and carried back into St Peter’s Basilica for burial, the crowd applauded a second time.
National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) head Vusi Pikoli led a team of senior managers to help revamp Pretoria’s Mamelodi District Court on Friday, the NPA said. The derelict Mamelodi Court was the first target of a project, ”Thusa batho — Making a difference” aimed at improving service delivery to the affected communities.
An American tourist died on Friday from wounds sustained in a bomb blast that rocked a Cairo bazaar popular with foreigners, a United States Embassy spokesperson said, taking the death toll in the Egyptian capital’s first such attack in seven years to three. Another three Americans were among the 18 people injured in Thursday’s explosion in a packed bazaar area.
President Thabo Mbeki called on South Africans on Friday to ”declare war against these parasites” guilty of social grant fraud and corruption. Writing in the African National Congress’ online publication, ANC Today, he referred to Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya’s announcement that more than 37Â 000 civil servants were already under investigation.
A British grandmother who baked cannabis-laced cookies as a treat for friends and neighbours in her rural village was spared jail on Friday after a judge said he did not want to make her ”a martyr”. Patricia Tabram prided herself on her cannabis snacks as well as casseroles and soups containing the banned drug, the court had been told.
Pope John Paul II’s funeral on Friday was marked in low-key fashion in Nigeria — the nation from which one possible successor has been tipped to come — but thousands turned out for Masses and held days of mourning in other parts of Africa. In South Africa’s largest township, Soweto, the Regina Mundi Catholic church held a special Mass.
Police in Togo on Friday used teargas to break up a demonstration by thousands of members of the opposition on the first day of an election campaign in the small west African country. Clashes broke out in central Lome when members mainly of the opposition Union of Forces for Change marched on the city hall to demand voters’ cards.