Daniel Carter kicked 14 points, including the conversion of Casey Laulala’s solitary try, to give the Canterbury Crusaders a 19-12 win on Saturday over the Wellington Hurricanes in a Super 14 rugby final marred by dense fog. Fog settled so thickly on Jade Stadium for the inaugural final of the expanded Super 14 competition that most of the 35 000 spectators caught only fleeting glimpses of the match.
Fresh fighting erupted in Mogadishu on Saturday after a brief lull, killing at least five people and injuring 11 others in intermittent battles that have blighted the lawless capital since February, witnesses said. Residents reported heavy gunfire in the southern Daynile district, where at least three people were killed and six others injured in the morning violence.
Not far from the site of the attacks on the World Trade Centre, Mark Bingham will be remembered for his grit and his heart, and the game he loved. The Bingham Cup, a rugby tournament open to gay teams, will be held this weekend. It pays tribute to Bingham, who was gay and believed to be one of the passengers who fought hijackers on the United flight.
The relatives of those who died in the September 2004 Beslan school siege vowed to continue their campaign for justice on Friday night after the sole surviving hostage-taker was convicted on murder and terrorism charges and sentenced to life in prison.
The advocate for Pakistani national Khalid Mahmood Rashid said this week he plans to subpoena all those involved in Rashid’s alleged deportation after a court-imposed deadline for providing information on his whereabouts expires on Monday.
Splits in the African National Congress during local elections continue to plague the Durban township of Umlazi, with violent infighting resulting in at least three deaths. At the centre of the conflict is Bhekisasa Xulu, whose election as ANC ward councillor a group of residents unsuccessfully tried to stop.
The land and agriculture sector is waiting with bated breath to see if the new Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, Lulu Xingwana, lives up to her fire-eating reputation in this sensitive portfolio. Reacting to her public statements as the former deputy minister of minerals and energy, Xingwana’s critics branded them ”naked racism”, ”anti-capitalist” and ”anti-white”.
A powerful earthquake rocked Indonesia’s main island of Java on Saturday, killing at least 3 000 people, injuring thousands more and causing mass destruction. Many could not escape in time and were buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings or struck by flying rocks and debris as the temblor devastated towns and villages cities across the south of the island.
Thirty-one people died in hospital following the explosion of a tanker truck in northern Benin, bringing the total dead to more than sixty, a local hospital official said on Friday. The accident occurred late on Wednesday, when a tanker truck transporting fuel to Mali overturned near the town of Porga, around 500km north of Benin’s commercial capital, Cotonou.
Just how much time former Enron chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling spend in prison could hinge on how much of the more than -billion lost in the company’s crash is deemed their responsibility. Under federal sentencing guidelines, the felons easily face more than 20 years in prison if investor loss tied to their actions exceeds -million or more.