The United States on Friday expressed its ”unequivocal” support for embattled Philippine President Gloria Arroyo and said there appears to be no real danger of a coup despite rumours. Arroyo has placed military and police forces on full alert as rumours swirl of a plot against her, fuelled by allegations she rigged last year’s election.
A millionaire British businessman, Friedhelm Eronat, was named on Thursday night as the purchaser of oil rights in the Darfur region of Sudan, where the regime is accused of war crimes and where millions of tribespeople are alleged to have been forced to flee, amid mass rapes or murders.
Burundi’s lone remaining Hutu rebel group on Friday accused the government of repeatedly violating a tentative truce signed last month, amid counter-accusations from Bujumbura. ”Burundi government troops have been repeatedly attacking us since May 17,” said National Liberation Forces spokesperson Pasteur Habimana.
The Jacob Zuma saga has forced President Thabo Mbeki into the zugzwang chess position, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said on Friday. ”This is a position in which a player has to move but he can only do so with loss or severe disadvantage,” Leon said. It was still not known by Friday when Mbeki would speak on Zuma’s fate.
I have been sitting in this car park now for 22 hours and 11 minutes. It’s a strange sort of car park: there are few cars in this car park; there are many people. There are trucks in this car park, but they are unusual trucks. These trucks have huge poles sprouting out of their roofs, pointing into the sky.
At least 40 children were killed on Friday when a flash flood struck a primary school in north-eastern China, hospital sources said. "There are at least 40 children who were sent to hospital to be saved and who did not survive," said a doctor at the hospital in Heilongjiang. A local bank worker said there were "at least 50 or 60 dead".
A museum dedicated to children’s author Roald Dahl (1916-1990), featuring chocolate-scented doors, a friendly giant and a crocodile bench, has been opened in Britain. The museum and story centre is in Great Missenden, the village in Buckinghamshire (north-west of London), where Dahl wrote many of his classics.
A German court on Friday found three elderly men, known as the ”grandpa gang”, guilty of bank robbery and sentenced them to between nine and 12 years in prison. Over a 16-year period, the trio robbed 14 German banks, stealing more than â,¬1-million (,23-million, R8,2-million).
A bus operator in Britain is road-testing sheep urine as a way of cutting pollution, the Guardian newspaper reported on Friday. Stagecoach has fitted a tank to a bus in Winchester, southern England, which sprays urine into the exhaust fumes to reduce nitrous oxide emissions.
”And so it all starts again. New season, new faces and new expectations after the usual bout of sulking, slandering and speculating. Clearly, not much has changed in South African rugby since last year’s Boks topped the charts for a few weeks.” Rob Davies looks at what this weekend’s rugby Test really means.