MOSCOW. — Russia accused the Syrian opposition yesterday of trying to derail UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan.
“Recently, mass media reports have proved that the armed opposition is making attempts to organise provocations in order to wreck reconciliation,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying. Lavrov said

VIENTIANE. — Cuban Ambassador to Laos Waldo Reyes Sardinas officially handed over 180 metric tonnes of sugar to Lao Vice Minister of Education and Sports Lytou Bouapao at a ceremony yesterday, in a bid to enrich the meals of more than 150 000 students in Laos. The sugar will be cooked into a mid-morning snack for primary and pre-primary school pupils in the poorest

JOHANNESBURG. — Lawyers for three ANC Youth League leaders had until midnight yesterday to file written heads of argument to the ANC appeals committee, party spokesperson Keith Khoza said. Khoza said by late morning he did not know if the papers had been filed. ANCYL president Julius Malema, spokesperson Floyd Shivambu and secretary-general Sindiso Magaqa were

LONDON. — Secret files from British colonial rule — once thought lost — have been released by the government, one year after they came to light in a High Court challenge to disclose them. Some of the papers cover controversial episodes including the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. They also reveal efforts to destroy and reclassify sensitive files. The Foreign Office

TOKYO. — Japan said yesterday it would pledge US$60 billion to the International Monetary Fund, saying it was a critical part of the organisation’s bid to boost a global firewall against Europe’s debt crisis. Finance Minister Jun Azumi said he hoped the move would spur other nations to kick in funds, which he said were “crucial not only to the eurozone but also to Asia and Japan

When Randy Cox was diagnosed with cancer, his six-year-old son Drew was desperate to help. But the youngster surely had no idea that his decision to open a lemonade stand would end up raising an incredible US$10 000 for his father’s medical bills in just a single day. Drew set up the stall in his neighbourhood in Gladewater, Texas, at 10am last Saturday. Before long visitors

WASHINGTON. — The World Bank was expected to name US Dr Jim Yong Kim its next president yesterday as his only rival, Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, lashed out at Washington’s perennial lock on the job. While the US nominee faced a challenge for the first time ever, there was little doubt that the Bank’s most powerful shareholders  the United States,

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI celebrated his 85th birthday yesterday with visitors from his native state of Bavaria in Germany and is now the oldest pope since Leo XIII, who died in 1903 aged 93. The pope began his birthday with mass in the frescoed Pauline Chapel in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace along with his 88-year-old brother Georg Ratzinger, himself a bishop

BEIJING. — More non-communist Chinese talents would be appointed as chiefs, rather than deputy heads of governmental agencies, according to an official statement issued on Sunday. Currently, two ministers in the cabinet are not members of the ruling Communist Party of China. Concrete efforts should be made to reserve more vacancies as government heads or

A German man who fathered four children with his sister — and then claimed an incest conviction breached his human rights — has lost his European court case. Patrick Stuebing and Susan Karolewski argued they had rights to privacy and family life, which they say were violated when German courts jailed Steubing for 14 months in 2005. The European Court of Human Rights, in

A desperate man got more than he bargained for when he embarked on a one-night stand. He was forced to escape onto a balcony before calling police for back-up after his new-found lover refused to let him go — because she wanted more sex.
The 43-year-old struck up a relationship with the woman, who is four years older than him, in a bar in Munich, Germany, on the