Three suicide bombers, two of them disguised as women, killed at least 79 people and wounded 164 as worshippers left a popular northern Baghdad Shi’ite mosque after weekly Friday prayers. The blasts marked the second major attack on Iraq’s majority community in as many days.
Dirt-cheap, straight-to-video voodoo horror flicks have made Nigeria the world’s third-largest film industry, writes Jeevan Vasagar.
Now that the municipal councils have been constituted and new local governments are in place, the African National Congress’s principal order of the day is ”Let the work begin”, South African President Thabo Mbeki says in his weekly newsletter. ”Happily, the overwhelming majority of the municipalities have acted to respect this directive.”
A South African Revenue Service (Sars) investigator threatened to arrest the wife of a state witness in the LeisureNet trial, the Cape High Court heard on Friday. LeisureNet’s former in-house architect, Dawid Rabie, was being cross-examined by defence advocate Francois van Zyl on a statement in his evidence-in-chief that he had been put under ”severe pressure” after being arrested by the Scorpions.
Before Irène Némirovsky was taken to Auschwitz, she gave her daughter a case containing papers and photos. When her daughter finally opened it, she found a novel that is now a runaway bestseller, writes Stuart Jeffries.
In a verdict worthy of a thriller, Britain’s High Court on Friday rejected a claim that author Dan Brown stole key elements of his blockbuster The Da Vinci Code from an earlier book by two other writers. Brown had been accused of breach of copyright by plagiarising passages from The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, for his 2003 novel.
Pleading confidentiality for not revealing what Monday’s full council meeting will discuss regarding the continued tenure of Cape Town’s city manager, mayor Helen Zille on Friday ruled out a mooted R1-million golden handshake. ”This multi-party government is saying we are drawing the line at the public purse being used as a piggy bank for golden handshakes.”
In a tale reminiscent of the last <i>Wallace and Gromit</i> movie, furious villagers in north-east England have hired armed guards to protect their beloved communal vegetable gardens from a suspected monster rabbit. Leeks, Japanese onions, parsnips and spring carrots have all been ripped up and devoured by the mystery were-rabbit.
The African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) has slammed the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) for its reaction to the utterings of ANCYL spokesperson Zizi Kodwa to Jacob Zuma supporters on Wednesday. ”The ANC Youth League is not surprised at the unfortunate response of the NPA to our criticism of its conduct,” the ANCYL said in a statement on Friday.
Alyce Mahon’s <i>Eroticism and Art</i> touches on a huge range of artists and works, writes Shaun de Waal.