The mother and son at the centre of the Michael Jackson allegations were shown in video footage yesterday praising the 46-year-old singer and insisting there was nothing untoward about his relationship with the boy. The prosecution insisted that the video of the pair said was staged.
About 7 000 people living as slaves in Niger will be told that they are free for the first time in their lives, as the government begins to enforce a law banning the practice of slavery. The government is expected to hold a ceremony to explain the law to people who have spent their whole lives as the property of their masters.
China will spend an extra 12,6 % on its armed forces this year, the government announced on Friday, adding to Washington’s fear that the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait is tilting towards Beijing. With its 2,5-million soldiers, the People’s Liberation Army is the world’s biggest armed force.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair will next week demand a radical shake-up of the west’s approach to the world’s poorest continent when his year-long Africa Commission calls for a doubling of aid, the dismantling of trade barriers, the writing off of debts and immediate action to stamp out corruption.
Umbumbulo, a rural village near Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal, was the scene of brutal conflict in the early 1990s between the Inkatha Freedom Party and African National Congress, which left orphans, widows and a shattered community in its wake.
Birmingham City have paved the way for Jermaine Pennant to play for them again this season, despite the winger being given a prison sentence for driving offences this week. The 22-year-old, who is on loan from Arsenal, has been jailed for three months for driving offences, a sentence that would effectively end his season.
It may be the beautiful game, but until now football has proved to be resolutely uncinematic. Though sports such as baseball, horse racing and American football have all inspired classic movies, soccer has wallowed conspicuously in Hollywood’s second division. Yet this could be about to change.
The ruling Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe has set its sights on achieving a two-thirds majority in the parliamentary elections scheduled to take place on March 31. The party’s secretary for administration, Didymus Mutasa, told the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> that "judging by the situation on the ground and the turnout at our rallies, the opposition presence in Parliament will be cut to 15 seats".
Ukraine’s former interior minister Yuriy Kravchenko was found dead on Friday in an apparent suicide only hours before prosecutors were expected to grill him about the 2000 slaying of a journalist, dealing a significant blow to an investigation that could implicate former president Leonid Kuchma.
With five leaders killed since November last year, the Inkatha Freedom Party is calling for action on political violence in KwaZulu-Natal, but some think it might be opening a can of worms. KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sibusiso Ndebele announced a commission of inquiry into violence in the province this week.