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/ 4 December 2004
The United States-led hunt for the Taliban continues relentlessly in Afghanistan. Three years after invading, 18 000 soldiers wield a battery of hi-tech weapons; stealth aircraft crowd the skies; satellites spin overhead; and special forces creep across remote mountains in a billion-dollar mission.
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/ 4 December 2004
Gunmen stormed a police station and bombed a Shia mosque in two simultaneous dawn attacks in Baghdad on Friday which killed at least 30 Iraqis and injured several. Dozens of prisoners were freed and weapons were looted from the police station, a brazen show of strength by the insurgents. Shortly afterwards guerrillas attacked at least two police stations in the northern city of Mosul.
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/ 4 December 2004
A 76-year-old retired Dutch maths teacher described on Friday how for more than 25 years he was feted by communist leaders around the world as the inspired head of a radical Marxist-Leninist party that never, in fact, existed. As Chris Petersen, head of the supposedly 600-member Marxist-Leninist party of the Netherlands, Pieter Boevé travelled to Beijing more than two dozen times and met Mao Zedong.
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/ 4 December 2004
United States sprinter Marion Jones says she’ll sue accused steroid peddler Victor Conte over his allegations that she received banned drugs before winning five medals at the Sydney Olympics ”Victor Contes’s allegations about me are not true, and the truth will come out in the appropriate forum,” Jones said Friday in a statement issued through her attorney.
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/ 4 December 2004
South African President Thabo Mbeki met some of the key figures in Côte d’Ivoire as he held talks on Friday aimed at pushing a ”roadmap to peace” for the divided West African nation, but he faced big hurdles. Mbeki arrived on Thursday in the troubled country’s commercial capital Abidjan and has been shuttling between talks with the main players.
Mbeki presents roadmap for peace
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/ 3 December 2004
The German parliament unanimously agreed on Friday to provide up to 200 troops to help transport African Union (AU) soldiers into the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur. Germany will use two of its military transport planes to fly Tanzanian African Union troops into Darfur from Tanzania and a third plane will be put on standby.
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/ 3 December 2004
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Two ABSA bank employees closely involved with the Jacob Zuma Education Trust Fund told the Durban High Court on Friday that the trust had applied for funding from the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund but was told it did not qualify. However, Mandela allegedly endorsed a cheque of R2-million for Zuma.
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/ 3 December 2004
A major British union Friday threatened a strike over the case of a hospital porter who refuses to tuck in his shirt in contravention of the dress code. The GMB union, which claims 600 000 members and is the product of union mergers over recent years, characterised as ”pathetic” the action of the private company which employs the porter.
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/ 3 December 2004
Zimbabwe’s main opposition party claimed on Friday that government forecasts of a bumper grain harvest were false and that the southern African country faced a severe food crisis next year. Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) shadow agriculture minister Renson Gasela told a press conference in the capital the government had inflated its estimated maize harvest as a pretext for putting a stop to international food aid.
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/ 3 December 2004
Under Saddam Hussein, Iraqi artists were forced to produce works that glorified the leader. Now the subject they most want to depict is the violence around them. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports.