A burning rabbit has destroyed a 150-year-old cricket club in Britain after being set on fire accidentally in a bundle of branches by two groundsmen, firemen said on Friday. The men, working at Devizes Cricket Club ground in the west of England, saw the rabbit escape, trailing its burning tail with it.
The New National Party leadership’s decision to dissolve the party and lay its ghost to rest — immediately after the 90th anniversary of the National Party in August — was unavoidable, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday, writing in the African National Congress’s online publication, ANC Today.
The <i>Hellkom</i> website, where the public can voice criticism of telecommunications giant Telkom, is part of freedom of expression, the Freedom of Expression Institute said on Friday. The institute’s remarks come after Telkom threatened <i>Hellkom</i> with a R5-million lawsuit earlier this week.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?a=0&o=134733">Will Telkom sue?</a>
Militants in the southern city of Basra on Friday released a British journalist they had kidnapped and threatened to kill after aides to militant Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr demanded he be freed. The journalist, James Brandon, was brought to al-Sadr’s local office and freed. He held an impromptu news conference there.
Thousands of members of the Italian security forces and hundreds of ambulances were preparing to deploy on Rome’s streets at the weekend ahead of an al-Qaeda-linked group’s deadline for the government to pull its troops out of Iraq. The deadline was given in a statement published in an Arab newspaper on August 1.
Uncertainty prevailed on Friday over efforts to find a negotiated end to the armed conflict and humanitarian crisis in Sudan’s western Darfur region as rebels threatened to stay away from talks in Nigeria. At the same time a diplomat in Ndjamena, the capital of Chad, said informal peace talks have begun in the Libyan town of Sirte.
Deposed Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his wife, Mildred, called on former South African president Nelson Mandela on Friday to ”thank him for his role in Haiti”. Aristide has been living in exile in South Africa with his wife and two daughters since May 31, three months after a popular uprising in Haiti forced him to flee.
Members of Parliament’s home affairs committee have approved the Immigration Amendment Bill with one objection from the Democratic Alliance. The DA objected to the composition of the Immigration Advisory Board, saying the board was not representative of civil society organisations.
Members of Parliament’s home affairs committee agreed at their meeting on Friday to probe how an adult shop managed to open its doors in front of Parliament. ”We have a problem. The fact of the matter is that it reflects quite horribly on this Parliament,” committee chairperson Patrick Chauke said.
The Freedom Front Plus joined other political parties on Friday in welcoming the South African Reserve Bank’s reduction of the repo rate by half a percentage point to 7,5%, but expressed concern about the strong rand. "It … will contribute to a more realistic value for the rand on international markets," the FF+ said.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=120354">’Mboweni has shown foresight'</a>