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/ 6 February 2008
Onwards to battle. That was the message emanating from a tough speech by Barack Obama as he addressed thousands of cheering supporters in his adopted hometown of Chicago. While the results of Super Tuesday were still being announced, Obama made a naked pitch to the rest of America who have not yet had a chance to vote.
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/ 5 February 2008
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama spent the final, tension-filled hours before Tuesday’s Super Tuesday primaries squeezing out votes in the East Coast battlefield states where opinion polls place the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination almost neck and neck.
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/ 4 February 2008
Exhausted White House hopefuls launched one last frenzied day of campaigning before the 24-state Super Tuesday — the biggest one-day White House nominating contest in history. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are fighting neck-and-neck in the Democratic showdown, while John McCain looked set to take a firm grip on the Republican contest.
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/ 4 February 2008
From the Indonesian city where Barack Obama spent part of his childhood to Hong Kong’s bars and a Dublin pub, United States Democrats abroad grabbed their first chance to vote in Super Tuesday primaries. The venues are about as far removed from formal political institutions as possible, from pubs and cafés to bookshops.
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/ 4 February 2008
Hillary Clinton tried on Sunday to bring Barack Obama’s aspirational candidacy back to earth, repeatedly accusing him of misleading voters in an attempt to halt his poll momentum ahead of the Super Tuesday contest. With opinion polls showing Obama making significant gains, Clinton tried to undermine Obama’s central appeal of being a politician who operated above the fray.
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/ 1 February 2008
Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton shared a debate stage alone for the first time on Thursday, striking a cordial tone and highlighting their opportunity to make history as the next United States president. ”Just by looking at us, you can tell we aren’t more of the same,” said Clinton, a New York senator who would be the first woman US president.
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/ 31 January 2008
Dozens more people in Japan on Thursday said they fell sick after eating Chinese-made food, a day after Japanese food companies recalled pesticide-contaminated dumplings from China that made 10 people sick. The food scare has triggered a nationwide probe into possible additional cases of food poisoning.
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/ 29 January 2008
It was as close as it gets to a coronation. In front of a rapturous, chanting crowd, Senator Ted Kennedy on Monday enfolded Barack Obama into a hug, and in that instant drew a clear line of succession from the Democratic hero of the past to a younger generation.
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/ 27 January 2008
Barack Obama easily won South Carolina’s bitterly contested Democratic presidential primary with the help of heavy black support on Saturday, dealing a setback to rival Hillary Clinton after a week of political brawling. John Edwards finished third in a state he won during his failed 2004 race.
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/ 25 January 2008
Italy’s president will hold crisis talks with political leaders on Friday to see whether he can avoid calling snap elections after a no confidence vote forced Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s government to resign. Prodi stepped down late on Thursday after losing, as expected, the vote in the Senate.
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/ 21 January 2008
Barack Obama lashed out at rival Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill, on Monday, calling the former president’s role in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination ”pretty troubling”. ”You know, the former president … has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling,” Obama said.
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/ 17 January 2008
The National Assembly on Thursday passed the Bill for which it was specially called back from holiday. The Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Amendment Bill was passed without debate, but with parties giving a three-minute explanation of their vote. The Bill passed by 266 votes to 52, with 12 abstentions.
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/ 16 January 2008
Republican presidential candidates turned their attention to South Carolina on Wednesday with their White House race as wide open as ever with a win by Mitt Romney in Michigan. South Carolina Republicans vote on Saturday in the first contest in the South in the US presidential race.
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/ 11 January 2008
Police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi is to be charged with corruption and defeating the course of justice after his application to prevent the National Prosecuting Authority from prosecuting him was denied in the Pretoria High Court on Friday. Judge Nico Coetzee said Selebi’s application bore no merit.
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/ 11 January 2008
It was the defining moment of the New Hampshire race: Hillary Clinton, the icy control queen of the Democratic party welling up with emotion — and it may have won her an improbable victory over Barack Obama. The emotional moment in a café on the eve of Tuesday’s poll was widely credited on Thursday for bringing female voters back to the Clinton fold.
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/ 11 January 2008
Japan is to resume its role in the war in Afghanistan after its government on Friday forced through a Bill extending a controversial refuelling mission. The move brought to an end months of political deadlock, and relieved friction with Washington over its commitment to the so-called war on terror.
The arrest of Gauteng Scorpions boss Gerrie Nel is a witch-hunt to protect police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi, said the Democratic Alliance on Wednesday. ”The axing of Vusi Pikoli and now Gerrie Nel has all the appearance of a witch-hunt to protect Selebi,” said DA spokesperson on Safety and Security Dianne Kohler Barnard.
”They said this day would never come,” said United States Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama at the outset of his barnstorming victory speech on Thursday night. But as he arrived in New Hampshire early on Friday, Americans woke up to the historic possibility that the day when they might have a black president was closer than they thought.
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/ 25 December 2007
Kenyan police fired teargas to disperse stone-throwing supporters of the country’s main presidential contenders on Monday after the candidates made a final push to win votes in a race deemed too close to call. Scuffles briefly flared shortly after President Mwai Kibaki and his opposition challenger, Raila Odinga, addressed huge rallies in the capital.
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/ 24 December 2007
Uzbekistan’s autocratic ruler Islam Karimov on Sunday tightened his grip on power, when he was re-elected president in an election condemned by opposition activists as illegal and a ”farce”. Karimov won an overwhelming victory despite being ineligible to stand as a candidate.
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/ 23 December 2007
Bill Clinton has never been one to avoid the limelight. Or stay on message. Last week, as he spearheaded a mission to rejuvenate his wife’s troubled presidential campaign, he showed that old habits die hard. In a publicity stunt at a grocery store in the vital first battleground state of Iowa, the ex-president caused brief chaos by breaking away to chat to the public.
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/ 14 December 2007
The African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) on Friday raised concerns over the delay of the Ginwala commission of inquiry into the former National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli, saying it has taken the attention off police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi.
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/ 3 December 2007
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South African President Thabo Mbeki and his arch-rival, Jacob Zuma, have both officially confirmed they are candidates for party chief of the African National Congress (ANC), their offices said Monday. ”Mr Jacob Zuma signed the ANC nomination form over the weekend in London,” Zuma’s spokesperson, Ranjeni Munusamy, said.
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/ 21 November 2007
President Thabo Mbeki’s announcement on Wednesday of a ”window of opportunity” for people convicted of alleged political offences before June 16 1999 has been warmly welcomed by most political parties. Pan Africanist Congress leader Motsoko Pheko hailed Mbeki’s announcement as an act of courage against odds.
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/ 21 November 2007
Umaru Yar’Adua looks serene in the official portrait hanging in a courtroom where lawyers in black robes are trying to unseat him as president of Nigeria. But his position may be less secure than the photograph. The presidential tribunal is a special electoral court empowered to hear petitions against his victory in April by losing candidates.
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/ 19 November 2007
Italy’s opposition leader Silvio Berlusconi has dumped his right-wing allies in a bid to form a new centrist force that he hopes can carry him back to power at an early election. In an interview Berlusconi explained his surprise decision to dissolve his ”House of Freedoms” alliance with Catholics, separatists and post-fascists.
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/ 8 November 2007
Nigeria’s President Umaru Yar’Adua has ratified revocation of Abuja plots allocated to him and other top citizens by former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, newspapers said here on Thursday. The country’s highest ruling body cited ”overriding public interests” for the revocation of the choice plots in the federal capital city.
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/ 1 November 2007
The district of Matatiele moved a step closer to being permanently incorporated into the Eastern Cape after the KwaZulu-Natal legislature in Pietermaritzburg on Thursday voted by a narrow margin in favour of the controversial Constitution 13th Amendment Bill. Heated debate between opposition parties and the ruling African National Congress preceded the vote.
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/ 1 November 2007
Japan ordered its naval ships on Thursday to withdraw from a refuelling mission in support of United States-led operations in Afghanistan as a political deadlock kept the government from meeting a deadline to extend the activities. The Pentagon said that Japan’s withdrawal would not affect its patrolling of the Indian Ocean.
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/ 31 October 2007
KwaZulu-Natal opposition parties on Wednesday accused the ruling African National Congress of ignoring the wishes of the residents of Matatiele and forging ahead with the district’s incorporation into the Eastern Cape. The Democratic Alliance (DA) accused the ANC of ”totally ignoring the wishes of the people of Matatiele Maluti”.
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/ 30 October 2007
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s 2007 Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement has received a cautious thumbs-up from some opposition parties. Tabling the budget in the National Assembly on Tuesday, he announced that almost R81,5-billion was to be added to the government’s projected spending over the next three years, bringing spending growth to 6,4% a year in real terms.
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/ 24 October 2007
Nigeria’s House of Representatives adjourned for another week on Tuesday as warring sides prolonged a crisis over alleged corruption. Nigeria’s lower chamber has been paralysed since speaker Patricia Etteh was found to have broken rules in awarding contracts worth -million to renovate two official houses and buy 10 cars.