Breakfast with Amy Pascal is just how a meeting with a Hollywood studio boss should be. In just over an hour, the co-head of Sony Pictures Entertainment was hugged by a movie star (Paul Bettany), a bestselling author (Dan Brown) and a scion of the Kennedy clan (Bobby Shriver). And when she talks of ”Steven”, she is, of course, referring to Spielberg.
Click on image for full-size view.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has launched a stinging attack on President Thabo Mbeki that appears to reiterate what was contained in the hard-hitting South African Communist Party discussion document released last week. On Thursday Cosatu said it was primarily concerned that the ANC leadership was "drifting towards dictatorship".
Divisions in the African National Congress are being galvanised by a crisis of self-definition and have created a vacuum in the party — a vacuum that the South African Communist Party has moved to fill by suggesting that unless the SACP decisively intervenes, the needs of the poor will never be met.
Turkish authorities were on Thursday investigating a large fire that destroyed the cargo terminal at the country’s biggest airport, responsibility for which was claimed by radical Kurdish militants. The police sealed off the badly damaged building at the Atatürk International airport and were examining tapes from security cameras, the Anatolia news agency reported.
A bomb blast killed three people and wounded 11 in one of Baghdad’s main squares on Thursday as the interim defence minister said restoring security to the capital was top priority for the new government. The force of the explosion levelled a building on Tahrir Square in the capital’s commercial heart, one of a series of attacks around the country.
Eight people have been arrested in connection with the death of several people on trains in Gauteng recently, the police and Metrorail said on Thursday. The group was arrested on the West Rand and in Pretoria and would face charges of attempted murder, Senior Superintendent Mary Martins-Engelbrecht said in a statement.
Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, who has been comatose in a Jerusalem hospital since suffering a stroke in January, will be moved next week to a rehabilitation clinic, an official said. ”Sharon is going to move to the Sheba Medical Centre at the beginning of next week,” Yael Bosem Levy, a spokesperson for the Hadassah hospital said.
At least 35 people were burned alive and dozens injured overnight in northern Benin when a fuel truck burst into flames while they were stealing petrol, official sources said on Thursday. ”We took 80 people into hospital, of whom 12 died. At the scene, 23 charred bodies have been counted,” Boniface Sambieni, director of the hospital in the nearby town of Tanguieta, told Agence France-Presse.
Newcastle midfielder Kieron Dyer was arrested after a woman complained that he had indecently exposed himself, Press Association, citing police sources, said on Thursday. Dyer (27) had been released on police bail without charge pending further investigation, sources said.