If the forecasts are to be believed, Japan’s players in next month’s World Cup are small fish in a big pond. An aquarium in Yokohama is organising a piscine World Cup, in which fish the colours of national teams fight for a ball packed with bait in a tank holding two goal posts.
Police cracked down on demonstrators in central Cairo, arresting 100 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including one of its leaders, as they were protesting on Thursday near a Cairo court where two hearings for pro-reform figures were scheduled.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Thursday accepted Parliament’s rejection of a constitutional change that would have enabled him to stand for a third term in office, saying it was victory for democracy. "For me and for all members of our party, the outcome is victory for democracy," Obasanjo said.
An elderly woman died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in Egypt on Thursday, marking the country’s sixth fatal case of the virus in humans, a World Health Organisation official (WHO) said. ”We have some basic information that she was a 75-year-old woman from al-Minya” in southern Egypt, WHO regional health regulation officer John Jabbour told Agence France-Presse.
Thousands of workers heeded a call by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) to down tools on Thursday in protest against South Africa’s high levels of unemployment and poverty. The mining and car-manufacturing industries appeared to be hardest hit.
The outlook for inflation continues to be generally favourable, with CPIX inflation expected to remain inside the target range until the end of the forecast period in 2008, South African Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni said on Thursday. He cautioned however that risks and challenges remained and that vigilance was required.
Italy’s financial police searched the offices of scandal-hit Serie A club Juventus on Thursday. Officers arrived early morning and went through documents. Former Juventus general director Luciano Moggi, the central figure of the Italian match-fixing scandal, has now been placed under formal investigation for suspected false accounting and tax evasion.
Norwegian referee Terje Hauge, who was criticized for sending off Arsenal goalkeeper Jens Lehmann after just 18 minutes against Barcelona in Wednesday night’s Champions League final, said he may have blown the whistle too early, a Norwegian newspaper reported on Thursday.
A public-private partnership to build 702 houses for low-income earners in the Cosmo City development in north-western Johannesburg was launched on Thursday. Cosmo City is a mixed-use, integrated housing development near Kya Sands.
A young mother from Nigeria who went to court to get a heart transplant in Britain despite overstaying her visa has died, the Department of Health said on Thursday. Ese Elizabeth Alabi (29), had been denied top priority for a transplant on the free-care-for-all National Health Service allegedly because of tough new rules to discourage ”health tourism”.