Michael Jackson has returned to the studio and plans to release a new album next year, a Bahrain-based record label said. The label, 2 Seas Records, which is owned by Sheik Abdulla bin Hamad al Khalifa, son of Bahrain’s king, said on Tuesday that it had signed an exclusive recording agreement with the beleaguered king of pop.
The chief judge in the trial of Saddam Hussein ruled on Wednesday that signatures linking the ousted Iraqi leader to a massacre in the 1980s were ”authentic”. Shortly after the trial resumed following a two-day recess, Judge Rauf Abdel Rahman again adjourned the trial, until April 24.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair launched a strongly-worded attack on Wednesday on Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, calling his regime a ”disgrace” that had brought the country to its knees. ”What the regime is doing in Zimbabwe is a disgrace,” Blair told Parliament in his weekly question-and-answer session.
”Maybe it was inevitable that as the child of a reborn God-botherer and a misanthropic atheist, I might end up a little spiritually perplexed. My grandmother, a stout-hearted Matabeleland farmer, read her gilt-edged Bible every night, but was known to call in a nyanga (traditional healer) when necessary”, writes Nicole Johnston.
There is no clear definition for the New Age movement. It is simply a term that lumps together a wide variety of beliefs, customs and practices, from acupuncture to astrology, Gnosticism, Wicca and various indigenous belief systems that have only recently been acknowledged in the West.
International community pressure to convince Iran not to develop nuclear arms should apply to Israel as well, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said on Wednesday. Saud made his comments during a wide-ranging inaugural speech at the second Saudi-British Two Kingdoms: Friendship and Partnership conference, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
The global economy, which has coped amazingly well with fallout from natural disasters and lofty energy prices, is expected to pick up a little more speed in 2006 and log another year of brisk growth. Still, risks remain, the International Monetary Fund indicates in its latest World Economic Outlook, released on Wednesday.
A Bloemfontein broker thought to have committed suicide at the Augrabies Waterfalls earlier this month was found alive at Springbok’s caravan park, police said on Wednesday. Gert Louis Rossouw (36) allegedly admitted after his arrest on Tuesday night that he had earlier made a false report (his suicide note).
Researchers said on Wednesday they have found geometrically cut stone blocks covering a central Bosnian hill that a hobby archaeologist claims is a pyramid. Archaeologists and other experts began digging on the sides of the mysterious hill near the central Bosnian town of Visoko last week.
The Department of Health has rejected a demand for the inclusion of the Aids Law Project in South Africa’s delegation to next month’s special United Nations session on HIV/Aids. The demand was made by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) as a precondition for its acceptance of its own inclusion on the list.