The run-up to the Schabir Shaik corruption trial starting in Durban on Monday has seen the media sharply focusing on the main players in the upcoming drama — even the judge. On Friday, it emerged that Squires also served as a politician and tough justice minister in the then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the 1970s under Ian Smith.
South African National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi was elected on Friday as the new president of Interpol during the final of the 73rd Interpol General Assembly in Cancun, Mexico, a spokesperson said. Selebi, who was Interpol vice-president for Africa, was elected by a vote of 89 to 31 over Mexican nominee Genaro Garcia Luna.
The former senior public prosecutor of the Pietermaritzburg Magistrate’s Court was convicted of fraud and corruption and sentenced in the Durban Regional Court on Friday. Stanley Ngubane was paid R70 000 in order for a murder accused to be detained at local police cells, instead of in prison.
The councillor responsible for Rome’s traffic, Mario di Carlo, has said he intends making owners of sports utility vehicles (SUVs) pay â,¬1 000 each year — more than triple the normal rate for a permit to enter the historic centre. His announcement is the latest move in a growing, Europe-wide backlash against four-wheel drives.
Using the bathroom in an upmarket New York restaurant does not come cheap and diners often find themselves not so much spending a penny as spending a dollar — or more. But any resentment at the fees charged by acquisitive bathroom attendants was tempered this week.
United States President George Bush on Friday became the first president since Herbert Hoover in the Depression to preside over a loss of jobs when the last set of employment figures published before next month’s election showed only a modest improvement in September.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard is on course for a fourth consecutive victory in Saturday’s general elections, with polls on Friday night suggesting he could even return with an increased majority despite a bruising campaign. All but a handful of polls over the course of the campaign have forecast a victory for the government.
Up to 4 000 asylum seekers drown at sea every year as they flee persecution or poverty, according to newly published British research. Fear of terrorism and public scares about mass migration have led to more vigilant coastal patrols and an international climate that discourages captains from stopping to help small boats in distress.
Ten people were injured on Friday when a parcel bomb exploded outside the Indonesian embassy in Paris, the first such attack in the French capital for nearly a decade. The device, planted beside an outside wall of the three-storey, 19th-century building in the smart 16th arrondissement, exploded just after 5am.
Pools of dried blood, shredded bathing suits, charred cars and rubble were left behind on Friday after a car bomb rocked Egypt’s Taba Hilton hotel, killing a still-undetermined number of people. The attacks there late on Thursday night and at a backpacker’s resort left at least 30 people dead and more than 100 wounded