Agriculture and defence ministers from 16 African countries met on Tuesday to marshal their forces for an assault on swarms of locusts whose incursions in West Africa are the worst in more than a decade and could produce widespread food shortages. Tuesday’s session was the latest in a series of meetings to battle the locusts.
The FBI on Tuesday took over the probe into the weekend bombing of a United States security firm in Kabul as the Afghan capital braced for further potential attacks in the run-up to the country’s landmark presidential election. At least nine people were killed and dozens injured in Sunday’s blast.
The Pharmaceutical Society of South Africa will appeal last week’s dismissal of its court challenge to new medicine pricing regulations, the society said on Tuesday. ”The society will exhaust all avenues to ensure the survival of pharmaceutical service delivery in South Africa,” a statement read.
Malawi has formulated a plan to clear abandoned landmines and other unexploded ordnance from areas along its border with Mozambique. The National Mine Action office said on Monday that authorities have finalised a plan to conduct ”a detailed survey and map areas that are dangerous [infested with mines]”.
Official opposition leader Tony Leon led nine Democratic Alliance (DA) councillors on a march from the Cape Town metropolitan council on Tuesday to protest at the way in which the Big Bay tender — a prime 14ha piece of real estate near Blaauwberg — has been handled.
The Texan wife of Mark Thatcher, who is currently under house arrest in South Africa following accusations he helped finance a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea, arrived in Britain on Tuesday morning. Diane Thatcher swept through London’s Heathrow airport surrounded by police and refused to say why she had left South Africa.
SA mulls Thatcher’s extradition
A Limpopo man has allegedly hanged his three sons, aged three, five and eight, at Mbilwi near Thohoyandou, police said on Tuesday. Police spokesperson Captain Ailwei Mushavhanamadi said the man took the boys into a room on Monday at 8pm, one after the other, and killed them by hanging them from rafters of the roof. The man left a suicide note and fled the scene.
Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic began his long-delayed defence against charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity before a United Nations court on Tuesday, denouncing the accusations as ”unscrupulous lies”. Milosevic intends to cross-examine more than 1Â 600 witnesses.
The trial of 19 people accused of plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea was suspended indefinitely on Tuesday at the request of the prosecution, the court said.
"The affair has an international dimension, there are inquiries outside the country that are beyond the remit of this tribunal," said presiding Judge Salvador Ondo.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=121342">’Is it normal to be tortured?'</a>
A 21-year-old Georgia man drove nearly 20km with the headless body of a friend hanging out of the passenger side window of his pickup truck following an accident in which the man’s head was severed by a utility pole support cable, a news report said on Monday.