When a head of state makes more headlines for running round the block than running the country, it brings a new meaning to "fit for office". The French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, is seen so often pounding the pavement that satirists call him "Nike-olas".
Many of the world’s biggest pop stars performed at Live Earth concerts around the globe on Saturday to try to persuade fans and governments to go green. Tens of thousands of people poured into venues in Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai and Hamburg to hear Linkin Park, Rihanna, Shakira, Kumi Koda and others, while former United States vice-president Al Gore appealed for action on climate change.
A suicide truck bomber ripped the heart out of a northern Iraqi village on Saturday, killing at least 105 people and demolishing dozens of homes and shops, police and medics said. Officials were stunned by the scale of the blast, which devastated the main market in Emerli, a small rural community of people from Iraq’s Shi’ite Turkmen minority.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands, imposed by drunk colonials playing with rulers and maps, which have kept them separate, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the unification.
Sub-Saharan Africa must urgently impose power rationing on companies and populations to limit the effects of a worsening energy crisis, industry and government experts said. Decades of underinvestment in electricity networks and growing populations mean the poorest 20% in the region have no access to electricity.
A landmine hidden in a box exploded in a livestock market in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, on Friday, killing five children who were playing football and wounding at least 10 others, witnesses said. Eyewitness Abdirizaq Sheikh said the blast at a livestock market ”shook the earth”.
Roger Federer moved just two wins away from a fifth successive Wimbledon title after a 7-6 (7/2), 3-6, 6-1, 6-3 quarterfinal victory over Spain’s Juan Carlos Ferrero on Friday. The world number one will take on America’s Andy Roddick or Richard Gasquet of France for a place in the final as he continues his campaign to win a fifth successive Wimbledon crown.
Rescuers called off their search on Friday after pulling 32 bodies from the wreckage of a Mexican passenger bus buried when a rain-soaked mountainside gave way. Officials initially speculated as many as 60 people were aboard the bus when it was engulfed by tons of rock and earth as it travelled on a twisting rural road early on Wednesday.
Heavy exchanges of fire erupted on Friday between Islamist militants holed up in a Pakistani mosque and security forces after the militants’ leader said he and his hundreds of followers would rather die than surrender. Earlier, gunmen fired at Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s plane as it took off from Islamabad’s military airport.
Two youths were killed in Limpopo on Friday after they were circumcised — bringing the number of circumcision deaths to at least 17 in four provinces in the last five weeks. At least 12 deaths were reported in the Eastern Cape, three in Limpopo and one each in Gauteng and North West since the winter ”circumcision season” started.