Thousands of people rallied outside the Baghdad headquarters of the United States-led coalition on Friday in a continued protest against a decision to suspend a newspaper owned by a radical Iraqi Shiite Muslim cleric. The peaceful protest was the biggest since the coalition last week temporarily shut the weekly.
Police found a bomb on Friday on a high-speed rail line between Madrid and Seville, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said. Bomb-disposal experts alerted by a railway employee found 10kg to 12kg of explosives, possibly dynamite, under a track about 60km south of Madrid on the route to the southern city of Seville.
The Palestinian Authority on Friday condemned Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s thinly veiled assassination threat against Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as an ”unprecedented escalation”. ”This is a serious threat, which is aimed at scuppering the peace process,” said Arafat adviser Nabil Abu Rudeina.
The United Nations is preparing an inquiry into grave human rights abuses in Côte d’Ivoire during an anti-government protest a week ago, a spokesperson said on Friday. ”The allegations speak of summary and extra-judicial executions, rape and sexual violence, arbitrary arrests and detention,” he said.
A retired Indian headmaster hanged himself three years after a court turned down his petition to exercise his right to die, it was reported on Friday. CV Thomas (85) hanged himself in his home in Thrissur in southern Kerala state. A note taped to his neck said: ”Bondage was worse than death. Let this fate not befall any other.”
![]()
A row has broken out over a claim by President Thabo Mbeki that a Democratic Alliance councillor in Port Elizabeth refused to walk in squatter areas for fear of getting her feet dirty. Mbeki made the allegation on Friday during a day of campaigning in the Nelson Mandela metropole.
Special Report: Elections 2004
Global banking group HSBC, which was recently awarded a banking licence in South Africa, has opened a branch in the country — its first sub-Saharan branch in Africa. The branch is based in Johannesburg and was officially opened by South African Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni.
Several Palestinians were wounded and more than a dozen arrested after clashing with Israeli police on Friday in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest site. Police conducted a rare raid into the compound, which is also revered by Jews, at the end of Friday prayers.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=33590">Sharon threat condemned</a>
The Supreme Court of Appeal has administered a R57-million smack to Transnet and, by implication, to Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe
Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe and his wife were treated to two exclusive United Kingdom sporting events by Deutsche Bank, which was contracted to his department at the time. Radebe, through his spokesperson, this week said he was not aware that the gifts had come from Deutsche Bank.