Mittal Steel came under fire this week for creating a "state within a state" in impoverished Liberia, according to a newly released report by human rights group Global Witness. In a report entitled Heavy Mittal? Global Witness said the steel company’s $900-million deal to exploit iron-ore reserves should be substantially renegotiated.
The independent Burundian human rights organisation Iteka reported earlier this week that 20 people suspected of belonging to the rebel group Parti pour la libération du peuple Hutu-Forces nationales pour la libération (Palipehutu-FNL) had been arrested and are being detained by security police. One woman detainee was said to have been tortured and to be in a critical condition.
Many elderly people are happy to be confined to their sofas and to perform only essential chores in and around the house. But 81-year-old "Tannie" Tienie Roos – actually Dr Roos – is bucking this trend.
Schools could soon be dishing out indigenous meals to hungry learners.
Education Minister Naledi Pandor and KwaZulu-Natal Education Minister Ina Cronje have been targeted in a landmark legal challenge aimed at protecting poor parents and pupils.
As peace talks between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) continue, a debate is raging over whether those who have committed war crimes should be allowed to escape international justice for the sake of peace. The LRA is insisting as its condition for full peace talks that the International Criminal Court, in The Hague, drop arrest warrants against its leaders on 33 charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The traffic department, in its wisdom, has decided to solve the problem of congestion on the N1 corridor between the crucial Gauteng centres of Johannesburg and Tshwane (still known to most people as Pretoria) by turning the former speed freak outside lane into an exclusive lane for vehicles with more than one passenger.
It’s 10am on a stiflingly hot Monday morning and I am in a delivery room with one of the unluckiest mothers on the planet. She is Dahara Laouali, and at the moment she is lying on a narrow, dusty hospital trolley pushing her baby into the world. Although the birth is imminent, Dahara is making no noise at all. This is Niger, where the tradition is that mothers labour in silence.
Samantha Galliet is best known as "that woman who took on Discovery". Diagnosed with breast cancer at 29, Galliet faced a woman’s worst nightmare. She had a particularly aggressive strain of breast cancer called Her2. Fortunately for Galliet there had been a breakthrough in drug therapy for this type of cancer and her chances of survival were dramatically increased by the availability of a new drug called Herceptin.
Former Zambian first lady Vera Tembo (formerly Chiluba) showed her resilience in last week’s general elections, winning a parliamentary seat for the Movement for Multi Party Democracy (MMD). She is the first woman to hold that seat, located in the heartland of the United National Independence Party opposition stronghold.