An unemployed teacher took 18 students, a teacher and another man hostage at gunpoint at a high school in western France on Thursday, officials said. At the time of going to press the drama was unfolding in a state high school in the town of Sable-sur-Sarthe, southwest of Le Mans.
Although South Africa was the biggest importer of poultry in Africa, it was also the country best prepared against avian flu, a Southern African Development Community (SADC) workshop on the epidemic heard in Pretoria on Thursday. ”South Africa is in a very good place. You are used to fighting bird flu.”
Villagers on the Zanzibar archipelago appealed for food aid on Thursday, after being hit by a drought that has hurt farmers across East Africa. The drought has also led to hunger in mainland Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti. ”We are facing a serious shortage of food in our village.”
The United States Department of State has listed Zimbabwe among the worst dictatorships in the world that trample on human rights and whose rulers are accountable to no one. It grouped Zimbabwe among some of the world’s most notorious dictatorships, such as the reclusive communist state of North Korea.
Lawyers for a group of men arrested after the discovery of an arms cache in Zimbabwe’s eastern city of Mutare were on Thursday still waiting for access to their clients, one of the lawyers said. ”We’re still waiting to get access to the accused,” said Tafadzwa Mugabe. He said it was not clear how many had been arrested.
Denmark’s national symbol, the Little Mermaid sculpture perched on a rock overlooking the Copenhagen port, was splattered with green paint by vandals and adorned with a dildo, police said on Thursday. Investigators have ”no leads on the perpetrators of the act … which took place early Wednesday”, police said.
About a dozen opposition members, accused of carrying out a spate of firebombings in Swaziland, have been beaten in prison, a defence lawyer told a high court on Thursday. Three of the 16, accused of high treason, stated they were attacked late on Wednesday by about 50 prison warders.
Total South Africa has decided to develop South Africa’s first ever bullfrog reserve, right behind their newly developed Petroport, north of Johannesburg, soon after it discovered the Petroport had destroyed the frogs’ breeding ground. ”Total decided to work with environmentalists in reducing the negative impacts on the frogs.”
The body of Transvaal Judge President Bernard Ngoepe’s four-year-old granddaughter was found underneath a bed in one of the rooms of her parents’ Lenasia home, police said on Thursday. The child was thought kidnapped in a robbery on Wednesday and a massive manhunt was launched for the kidnappers.
A Red Cross helicopter crashed while ferrying food to earthquake survivors in Pakistan-administered Kashmir on Thursday, injuring the two South African crew members, officials said. The International Committee of the Red Cross said the Puma transport helicopter came down near a heliport in Muzaffarabad.