Zimbabwe’s national blood transfusion service has been crippled by a lack of foreign currency and mobile teams have stopped collecting blood, local reports said on Tuesday. Mobile blood collecting teams bring in about 70% of Zimbabwe’s national blood stocks, the state-run Herald said.
South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) has been urged to probe the financial links between its youth league and the late Brett Kebble. Democratic Alliance (DA) spokesperson Ian Davidson said a scandal had erupted from court papers filed by Randgold & Exploration that implicated Kebble and at least three ANC Youth League heavyweights ”in outright fraud”.
Zimbabwe will play seven one-day internationals against the West Indies as their tour schedule is extended to make up for their loss of Test status. West Indies Cricket Board chief executive Roger Brathwaite, Zimbabwe Cricket and the Board of Control for Cricket in India, whose team is also touring the Caribbean this year, met in Dubai to hammer out a schedule.
Dana Reeve, who battled tirelessly alongside her late husband, Superman actor Christopher Reeve, to find treatments for paralysis victims, has died. She was 44. Reeve, a lifelong non-smoker, died in a New York hospital on Monday of lung cancer, said Kathy Lewis, president and CEO of the Christopher Reeve Foundation.
President Thabo Mbeki has opened a new museum complex at the University of the Witwatersrand to showcase the origin of mankind and bushman rock art to the public. Mbeki said the opening of the Origins Centre was timely, following soon after the inauguration of the Southern African Large Telescope and the Cradle of Humankind Maropeng Visitor’s Centre.
The head of Southern African Catholics says he and other church leaders have told President Thabo Mbeki to impose sanctions against President Robert Mugabe’s government but the South African leader will not do it because he lacks the political will.
The United States ambassador to Baghdad conceded on Tuesday that the Iraq invasion had opened a Pandora’s box of sectarian conflicts which could lead to a regional war and the rise of religious extremists who ”would make Taliban Afghanistan look like child’s play”.
Former Enron finance chief Andrew Fastow on Tuesday offered potentially damaging testimony against his former boss, Jeffrey Skilling, as the trial of the energy firm’s two highest-ranking executives reached a critical stage. He also broke down at one point while recounting the events that led to his wife, Lea, being sent to prison for a year.
In two seemingly unrelated events, the east of Zimbabwe was rocked recently — first by a violent earthquake and then by the election of Manicaland local hero Arthur Mutambara as the president of the pro-Senate faction of the Movement for Democratic Change.
Former United States president Bill Clinton this week said he supports mandatory HIV testing in countries with high prevalence, provided people are willing to participate in the testing programmes and that the country can provide access to anti-retroviral drugs and ensure HIV-positive residents would not experience discrimination.