An economist picked by Malawi’s outgoing President Bakili Muluzi as his successor and an opposition leader were locked in a close race on Friday, following the third free elections in the southern African nation. Bingu wa Mutharika of the ruling United Democratic Front was leading in the densely populated south but Gwanda Chakuamba of the Mgwirizano Coalition was scoring well throughout the country.
You stroll past the queue outside and walk straight into the club slowing down to flash your arm past an electronic scanner. At the bar you claim your vodka tonic by flexing your triceps at the bar staff and even the door to the chillout room opens automatically when you approach.
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, head of coalition forces in Iraq, issued an order last October giving military intelligence control over almost every aspect of prison conditions at Abu Ghraib with the explicit aim of manipulating the detainees’ ”emotions and weaknesses”, it was reported on Friday.
Ask to be directed to the latest wave of Israeli destruction in Rafah’s al-Brazil neighbourhood and many fingers point towards the zoo. Amid the rubble of dozens of homes that the Israeli army continued on Friday to deny demolishing, the wrecking of the tiny, but only, zoo in the Gaza Strip took on potent symbolism for many of the newly homeless.
Bulldozers crush hope
Manchester United won its 11th FA Cup on Saturday with a 3-0 win over first division Millwall at Millennium Stadium off two goals from Ruud van Nistelrooy. Van Nistelrooy’s 65th minute penalty was his 29th goal for United this season, earned when Ryan Giggs was brought down by Millwall’s David Livermore. His second was a tap-in in the 81st minute.
The Foreign Affairs department was trying to verify on Friday the citizenship of two men, said to be South Africans, in trouble with the law in Indonesia and Thailand. ”We are awaiting verification of the identities of the two men from our respective South African missions,” a departmental official said.
Reading this collection of short pieces written by journalists based in foreign countries is like living life through their eyes. Largely made up of ”on the road” moments, this is a collection that can truly be appreciated by travellers, or fellow journalists, writes Nicola Mawson.
Woolworths has long been associated with quality. Think Woolworths, and what comes to mind is a third-generation, hand-me-down item of clothing that might just have come back into fashion by then. Now Woolies — bless its Proudly South African heart (and its marketing mind) — is venturing into the realm of local, good quality design and art, writes Mike van Graan.
Healing Destination, a limited-edition release by the afribeat production team — and finally available commercially on Mountain Records — is the debut by the Goema Captains of Cape Town, Mac Mackenzie’s crew of talented jazz and carnival musicians. Julian Jonker contemplates whether the rebirth of goema will sell itself and Cape Town to the world.
Zimbabwe police on Friday arrested Bornwell Chakaodza, editor of the independent weekly Standard newspaper, and one of his reporters, for the second time in three days, his staff said. ”They came to his house at 7am and took him to the police station,” said David Masunda, deputy editor of the Standard.