A North West school pupil committed suicide after shooting dead a fellow pupil at the Nelson Mandela Secondary School at about lunchtime on Friday, police said. Captain David Serepa said police were investigating how the boy got the gun, which allegedly belonged to a member of his family.
A third and final round of peace talks for East Africa’s most beleaguered country, Somalia, is scheduled to begin on May 20 amid funding shortfalls and frustration at the antics of faction leaders. Somalia is currently the only country in the world without a central government, having been ruled by faction leaders since January 1991.
As South Africa’s new government braces itself for the task of extending clean water supplies to more people, environmentalists are warning there may soon be little water to distribute if conservation efforts are not stepped up. They believe the country will run out of water by 2030 unless current water resources are better maintained.
The editor of the British tabloid Daily Mirror was sacked on Friday after being caught up in a scandal involving fake pictures that purportedly showed British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, the newspaper said. ”The Daily Mirror has been the subject of a calculated and malicious hoax,” the paper said.
Brazil’s government has accepted an apology to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from lawyers for a New York Times reporter who wrote an article suggesting the president has a drinking problem, the justice minister said on Friday. The article said Silva’s drinking habits have become a ”national concern” in Brazil.
The first state-sanctioned gay marriages in Massachusetts were set to begin on Monday after the United States Supreme Court refused to step in and block the weddings. The high court’s decision on Friday was the last chance for gay marriage opponents to block the unions in the East Coast US state.
Four more Israeli soldiers were killed in the Gaza strip on Friday as the military began razing hundreds of refugee homes in what the government called a security operation but critics described as retaliation for some of the worst casualties of the intifada. An Israeli MP called the destruction a war crime.
Robert Mugabe likes to win elections, but few imagined his appetite for victory would extend to Lupane, a constituency that has a special reason to loathe Zimbabwe’s president. It was here that he waged war against the Ndebele people two decades ago by exterminating entire villages, leaving forests dotted with mass graves.
The Imam Ali shrine, the most sacred site in the Shia religion, was damaged on Friday after a day of vicious fighting between United States forces and fighters loyal to the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the holy city of Najaf. The fighting rapidly spilled over into Najaf’s vast cemetery, known as the Valley of Peace.
Editor fired over fake Iraq photos
As the seven-year turnaround story of Edgars Consolidated Stores (Edcon) reached its climax this week, a key trade union warned of the dangers of growing casualisation and monopoly in the retail sector. Last week Edcon delivered market-defying results, which CEO Steve Ross made a point of noting "were underpinned by a sound economy".