Sierra Leone’s military chiefs are working on means to downsize from its current 10 000 soldiers to 8 500, Defence Minister Palo Conteh said on Friday, according to a state radio report. ”We cannot allow a large army …We have to downsize to a lean army that can react quickly to a given situation,” he said.
”What I have seen here, I will tell the world in words and in songs,” South African diva Miriam Makeba — an ambassador of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation — promised women with smallholdings on the banks of the Congo, then threw aside her cane for a spontaneous song in the sand.
Animal rights activists declared themselves human shields on Saturday and vowed to prevent authorities from killing kangaroos that have overrun a Canberra military base. Last week, the Australian government enraged animal lovers by approving the killing of about 400 kangaroos at risk of death from starvation.
The pressure of qualifying for the Beijing Olympics for world indoor long-jump champion Khotso Mokoena is over after he carded a leap of 8,24m with his first dash at the board on the first day of the South African Track and Field Championships at Coetzenburg on Friday.
The Free State Cheetahs emphasised that they are top contenders to lift the Vodacom Cup title this year with a solid 34-20 win over the Pumas in Witbank on Friday night. In other matches, the Wildebeest beat the Griffons 33-7 in Welkom and a brace of tries by Wylie Human sealed another victory for Western Province.
The Warriors will contest the final of the MTN Domestic Championship after a comprehensive 42-run victory over the Eagles in the first of the two semifinals at Buffalo Park in East London on Friday. They now need to wait until Sunday to see whether they will play the Titans or the Cape Cobras on Wednesday in the final.
There were mistakes all round — and it was one final error by hapless referee Thabo Nkosi that paved the way for Kaizer Chiefs to enter the last 16 of the Nedbank Cup with a tense 2-0 extra-time victory over Ajax Cape Town at King’s Park Stadium in Durban on Friday night.
Lewis Hamilton got an early psychological edge over Kimmi Raikkonen, winning pole position for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix while the world champion will start near the back of the grid. McLaren’s Hamilton had the fastest times in the second and third runs of the three-phase qualifying session.
A play about the United States activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed at the age of 23 by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza, will be performed for the first time in Israel on Sunday, on the fifth anniversary of her death. The single-actor play My Name Is Rachel Corrie will first be performed in Arabic in Haifa, northern Israel.
The global credit crunch claimed its biggest victim yet on Friday when the United States Federal Reserve orchestrated an emergency bail-out for Bear Stearns after a cash crisis prompted a run on the US’s fifth-biggest investment bank. President George Bush sought to calm fears of a deep recession in the world’s biggest economy.