Friday April 16, 2010
Soccer Fans Rush for World Cup Tickets in South Africa
Scores of soccer fans in South Africa lined up overnight as tickets to the 2010 FIFA World Cup went on sale.
The fans flocked various outlets where 500,000 tickets are up for sale ahead of the month long feat expected to kick off on June 11. In Cape Town, the sale turned tragic when a 64 year old man died of heart attack in a fracas that forced local police to use pepper spray to restore order.
Being the first time Africa is hosting the World Cup, the tournament is expected to boost South Africa’s economy, especially through massive investment in the transport, telecommunication and energy sectors. [ER]
Madagascar’s Rajoelina to Meet Ousted Leader over Truce
Madagascar’s leader Andry Rajoelina has expressed willingness to form an interim government and electoral commission if negotiations between him and ousted President Marc Ravalomanana succeed.
Rajoelina made the statement while speaking on national television. Madagascar’s military earlier this week gave Rajoelina an ultimatum to solve the political crisis by the end of April or else they will intervene.
Madagascar’s political crisis and diplomatic isolation began when Rajoelina forced Ravalomanana to resign in March 2009 using a series of military-backed street protests [ER]
Obama Orders Sanctions against Somali Fighters
US President Barack Obama has issued an executive directive sanctioning the assets of individuals deemed to have a direct hand in Somalia’s political instability and rampant piracy off the wartorn country’s Indian Ocean coast.
Obama’s decree empowers the US treasury department to freeze assets belonging to individuals linked to the militant Al Shabaab rebel movement, which is believed to have relations with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. The sanctions also target those interfering with humanitarian operations and the violators of an existing UN arms embargo against Somalia.
Al Shabaab has remained the biggest threat to the country’s UN-backed interim government and has taken control of much of Southern Somalia. [ER]
Uganda’s Besigye to Run against Museveni
Uganda’s main opposition party, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), has chosen Kizza Besigye as its candidate to face President Yoweri Museveni in next year’s presidential election.
A veteran opposition leader, Besigye has lost the past two elections to Museveni. The FDC is part of a new opposition alliance that aims to field a joint candidate to face President Museveni, who has been in office since 1986.
Uganda is currently being wooed by foreign investors over recent significant oil finds that are expected to turn its economy round. [ER]
Nine Killed in Sudan Poll Violence
Nine members of Sudan’s ruling party National Congress Party (NCP) have reportedly been killed in the semiautonomous South during the just ended national elections.
The NCP alleges that southern army soldiers shot the president of its South Sudan branch and eight other party members at his home on Wednesday night. The South’s ruling SPLM party has denied the involvement of its soldiers in the killings, which it dismissed as the result of a domestic feud between the murdered NCP leader and his wife.
President Omar al-Bashir is expected to win re-election when results of the country’s first multi-party polls in 24 years are released. Two major contenders, including the SPLM candidate for national president, Yasir Arman, boycotted the presidential contest claiming fraud by Bashir and the NCP.
South Sudan is expected to vote in a secession referendum in 2011 as part of a comprehensive peace deal that ended two decades of civil war between the North and the South. [ER