South African president marries fourth wife

CNN) -- South African President Jacob Zuma married his longtime fiancee in a private ceremony at his rural home, making her one of his four current wives.

Zuma, 70, tied the knot with Bongi Ngema in a traditional ceremony Friday in the town of Nkandla.

It is the sixth marriage overall for the polygamous president - - one of his wives died while another one divorced him.

The president practices the Zulu tradition, which allows polygamy. While legal in South Africa, polygamy is losing popularity with the younger generation in the continent, where it is still practiced in some cultures.

Zuma -- who has 21 children -- embraces his culture, said Mac Maharaj, a government spokesman.

"One of the challenges we have in this world ... is that some communities are looked down as inferior and there's a major struggle to assert our culture," Maharaj said. "You don't have to be ashamed of your culture provided you don't intrude on other people's fundamental rights."

The bridal party took part in a celebratory dance after the traditional Zulu wedding that included the president's three other wives.

The government did not pay for the wedding festivities nor does it pay for the four spouses' expenses unless related to state duties, the spokesman said.

South Africa has no official position of first lady, and the wives maintain private homes, he said. Their benefits include a personal secretary, and they accompany the president during travel on a rotating basis.

"The new Mrs. Zuma had already been part of the spousal office machinery in terms of administrative support so there will be no changes due to the wedding," Maharaj said.

Ngema, an activist, dated the president for years and they have a 7-year-old son together.

Zuma became president in 2009. He is also married to Sizakele Zuma, Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma and Tobeka Madiba-Zuma.

China, Russia start joint naval exercises in Yellow Sea

(CNN) -- Chinese and Russian warships began six-day joint naval exercises Sunday in the Yellow Sea, China's state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

"The exercises will involve several simulated missions, including the rescue of a hijacked ship, the escort of a commercial vessel and the defense (of) a convoy from air and sea attacks," a Russian defense ministry spokesman said Friday, according to Russia's RIA Novosti news agency.

The war game will include 16 Chinese vessels and two submarines, as well as 13 aircraft and five shipboard helicopters, Xinhua said. The agency said four Russian warships and three Russian supply ships arrived Saturday.

More than 4,000 Chinese service members will attend the exercises, Xinhua said, citing navy sources.

'American Idol': A second straight shocker

For two straight weeks now, American Idol viewers have delivered shocking voting results. Last week, they'd have sent Jessica Sanchez home if the judges hadn't used their save. This week, there was no save remaining for Colton Dixon. The Tennessee singer's first trip to the Bottom Three resulted in his elimination.

"You know, I need to apologize," Colton told Ryan Seacrest and the judges after he heard the news. "I wasn't myself last night, and I get it. I appreciate what you told me last night. I'll take that when I'm making a record."

"You have a huge career ahead of you, man," Randy Jackson told him.

So Hollie Cavanagh and Elise Testone, who have "vacation homes in the Bottom Three," as Jimmy Iovine might say, outlasted a possible favorite.

India tests nuclear capable missile

India successfully test-fired today a nuclear-capable missile that can reach Beijing and Eastern Europe, thrusting the emerging Asian power into an small club of nations with intercontinental nuclear weapons capabilities.

Footage showed the rocket with a range of more than 5,000km blasting through clouds from an island off India's east coast. The defence minister said the test was "immaculate".

"Today's launch represents another milestone in our quest for our security, preparedness and to explore the frontiers of science," India prime minister Manmohan Singh said in a congratulatory message to the scientists who developed the rocket.

The Indian-made Agni V is the crowning achievement of a programme developed primarily with a threat from neighbouring China in mind. It will not be operational for at least two years, the government says.

Only the UN security council permanent members - China, France, Russia the United States and Britain - along with Israel, are believed to have such long-range weapons.

Fast emerging as a world economic power, India is keen to play a larger role on the global stage and has long angled for a permanent seat on the security council. In recent years it has emerged as the world's top arms importer as it upgrades equipment for a large but outdated military.

The launch, which was flagged well in advance, has attracted none of the criticism from the West faced by hermit state North Korea for a failed bid to send up a similar rocket last week.

But Chinese media noted the test with disapproval.

"The West chooses to overlook India's disregard of nuclear and missile control treaties," China's widely read Global Times tabloid said in an editorial published before the launch, which was delayed by a day because of bad weather."

India should not overestimate its strength," said the paper, which is owned by the Chinese Communist Party's main mouthpiece the People's Daily.

India has not signed the non-proliferation treaty for nuclear nations, but enjoys a de facto legitimacy for its arsenal, boosted by a landmark 2008 deal with the United States.

Yesterday, Nato said it did not consider India a threat.

The US state department said India's non-proliferation record was "solid", while urging restraint.

"India says its nuclear weapons programme is for deterrence only. It is close to completing a nuclear submarine that will increase its ability to launch a counter strike if it were attacked.

India lost a brief Himalayan border war with its larger neighbour, China, in 1962 and has ever since strived to improve its defences. In recent years the government has fretted over China's enhanced military presence near the border.

It is buying more than 100 advanced fighter jets, likely Rafales built by France's Dassault, in one of the largest global arms deals.

Even so, slow procurement procedures and corruption scandals mean its army, the world's second biggest, relies on critically outdated guns and suffers ammunition shortages.

Today's launch may prompt a renewed push from within India's defence establishment for a fully fledged intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) programme, with weapons capable of reaching the Americas, though some of India's allies may bridle at such an ambition.

The Agni V is the most advanced version of the indigenously built Agni, or Fire, series, part of a programme that started in the 1960s. Earlier versions could reach old rival Pakistan and Western China.

The three stage rocket is powered by easier-to-use solid rocket propellants, can carry a 1-tonne nuclear warhead and is road mobile.

Elise may be in trouble on 'American Idol'

Skylar Laine and Phillip Phillips have it, which is why they’re surely safe. Jessica Sanchez had none a week ago and still needs to work on hers. And Elise Testone got to hear about her lack of it for what seemed like an eternity.

To hear the judges tell it, the voices are not the issue. As Randy Jackson reminded everyone, the talent here is way better than those of any competing show, which is a complete shock coming from one of the guys who picked said talent. It’s all about connecting with the song and the audience so we can see the contestants are as great as the judges think they are.

Everyone sang twice, one recent hit and one soul number. That gave the judges two chances to remind us that Jessica has a really great voice and they were totally right to save her. But they did note after her second song, “Try a Little Tenderness,” that she needed to improve that connection. She may not be the low vote-getter again, but if you didn’t like her shoutiness before – and judging by the results last week, many of you didn’t – your opinion was unlikely to change Wednesday.

She could still find herself in danger, but Joshua Ledet is unlikely to join her this time. If there was ever a week that set him up for success, it was this one. He sang last, and the soul theme allowed him to close the show with “A Change Is Gonna Come” and got Jennifer Lopez begging the viewers not to send him home. Then again, ask DeAndre Brackensick how well that plea worked out for him a couple of weeks ago.  

Skylar might not have Jessica’s voice, but she can sure work a crowd. Though “Born This Way” was better than “Heard It Through the Grapevine,” she had the audience eating out of her hand, and the judges along with them. The same went for Phillip, particularly with his cover of Usher’s "U Got It Bad."

Colton Dixon, on the other hand, might have to worry for the first time this year. Neither “Bad Romance” nor “September” were truly gripping, and it particularly hurts that Skylar’s Gaga cover was better than his. And speaking of trouble, even though Hollie Cavanagh sang as well as she has all year, going first won’t help her, and her fans may not be as determined after she survived last week’s scare. The endorsement from the Liverpool Football Club was appreciated, but an NFL club would have helped her more, given that the show is located on this continent.

As for who’s likely to go ... let’s just say that the deck was stacked against Elise from the beginning, and the piling on from the judges didn’t help.

After her performance of "Let's Get It On," Steven told her she needed to "take it up a notch," while Randy opined that she's "not really sure" what's right for her voice, and that she "kind of oversang" the tune. That's tough talk coming from the "Idol" judges. And it didn't end there. 

"Elise has a vacation home in the bottom three. I don’t think she has a massive fan base in this thing,” Jimmy Iovine noted in the mentoring session. “I don't know what it is. She's a fabulous singer. If she isn't great, she doesn't get the votes."

Breivik 'did not expect to survive'

Mass killer Anders Breivik said today he thought he had only a slim chance of escaping Norway’s capital alive after setting off a bomb in the government district on July 22nd.

On the fourth day of his terror trial, the anti-Muslim extremist said he had expected to be confronted by armed police when he left Oslo for a youth camp on Utoya island, where he killed 69 people in a shooting massacre. No one stopped Breivik on his way to the island.

Breivik told the court today he had prepared for a firefight with police in Oslo by playing video games, and said: “I estimated the chances of survival as less than 5 per cent.”

Breivik has confessed to the bomb and shooting rampage, but rejects criminal guilt saying he was acting to protect Norway and Europe.

Book review: “Who is That Man?” by David Dalton

The conjurer’s art is a tricky one, all the more so when that sleight of hand is brought to bear on an individual’s identity. Bob Dylan has been rock music’s resident shape-shifter for more than 50 years now, replacing one persona with another, as fans, scholars, pop culture mavens and chat-room habitues make their case for the version of Robert Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minn., that best encompasses all the others. Veteran biographer David Dalton has taken a more involved approach than we’re used to seeing as he sifts through each successive, mounting image of a man who doesn’t so much resemble someone you might pass on the street as he does a living, breathing construct, a superimposition of selves, lies, truths and lies that beget truths.

Dylan’s history, such as he designed it, resembles a great mash-up of literary styles: tall tales, farce, the picturesque, the picaresque, the road saga, the surrealist internal monologue. It all goes into the hopper, just as folk, rock, blues, Tin Pan Alley and cabaret went into the music. As Dalton notes early on, if you’re going to understand Dylan, you need to recognize that everything is mutable in his world, and often inverted. “His fabrications are the most profound, interesting, and authentic part of his personality,” Dalton writes.

Hyperion) - ‘Who Is That Man?: In Search of the Real Bob Dylan’ by David Dalton (Hyperion. 383 pp. $26.99)

If you’re into self-made people, the figure — a panoply of figures, really, all set on top of one another — that emerges here will represent an apex of sorts. Dylan had a normal background, pretty humdrum, even, but no interest in leading any kind of a normal life, and so he invented a back story that would make a profligate liar like Huck Finn blanch. Of course, if you believe that family dynamics are sacrosanct, you’ll probably be less than thrilled when you learn that Dylan enjoyed telling the press that he had no parents, even when he was sending them airline tickets to come watch his shows. Papa Zimmerman, as you might guess, was less than enthused, but he made excuses anyway, as a lot of people do for Dylan throughout his strange narrative. Dalton, fortunately, has the good sense to underscore the drama inherent in that narrative arc and serves up a big, wide, subsuming tale, interspersed with tidbits and analysis about the music that both soundtracks and mirrors it.

For all of the shelf-busting Dylan literature that’s out there, it’s rare that you find a book in which the music is discussed as adroitly as any aspect of the life. A lot of Dylan biographers stress the man’s vitriol, cataloguing one withering put-down after another, sometimes offering up a theory for how such and such a horridly offensive remark turned into a given song lyric. There’s a weird fetishization of Dylan’s top disses, and the music, which is both autonomous and tethered to Dylan’s shifting personas — one more paradox and inversion — gets distorted. Dalton is a penetrating critic, though, and when he makes the sage point that “Chimes of Freedom” — a song in which a lightning storm is a trigger for solidarity — is practically a hymn, the acerbity is provided with a foil, and we see that Dylan didn’t so much shed one identity for another as manage multiple selves at the same time.

Dalton then turns to the effect of this multiplicity on Dylan’s relationships and on the people who loved him. Dalton’s take on “Blood on the Tracks” (1975) — as gut-wrenching an album as there is in rock-and-roll — and the busted, pain-wracked man who made it is the freshest you’ll find. Bob-niks have debated the album’s autobiographical quotient ever since it came out, but as Dalton says: “Songs are autobiographical by definition. What you make up is you, too. Angels and demons are painted by the same hands.” So that’s what you get then: not a single identity, guise, art, but rather an individual who, we might say, was/is his imagination. The further that imagination can go, the more people come to populate the narrative of one man’s life, even though they all begin, and end, at the same point.

Fleming is a cultural critic who has written for the Atlantic, Rolling Stone and many other publications.