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/ 24 December 2006
South Africa’s porcupines are being slaughtered so their quills can be turned into tourist souvenirs, an animal welfare group said on Sunday. ”Porcupines are being hunted wholesale for the fashion market and nobody has any idea how many are being killed,” said Christina Pretorius of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
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/ 5 December 2006
Diabetes is striking growing numbers of children around the world as parents and doctors fail to diagnose a disease that until recently was associated mostly with middle-aged and elderly people, experts said on Tuesday. ”Diabetes has become a chronic and common disease among children,” Francine Kaufman, a professor of paediatrics, told a news conference.
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/ 22 November 2006
Wealthy tourists jetting into South Africa to stay at luxury safari lodges pay top dollar for the illusion of danger, epitomised by a trumpeting elephant or a lion moving in for a kill. But lodge workers and the impoverished surrounding communities face a threat far more deadly than the leopards and lions that thrill the visitors.
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/ 15 November 2006
In a dangerous cat-and-mouse game, South African police are battling armed gangs of gold pirates through dark mine shafts deep underground to stop an illicit gold trade worth more than -million (about R5,1-billion) a year. Assistant Police Commissioner Mike Fryer said the new operation opened a fresh front in South Africa’s war against gold smuggling.
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/ 19 October 2006
South Africa, burdened with one of the world’s worst Aids crises, should institute mandatory HIV tests through employers, banks and medical-insurance programmes, a senior Aids doctor said on Thursday. ”I don’t think ignorance is a human right,” said Dr Francois Venter, head of the South African HIV Clinicians Society.
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/ 30 September 2006
Zambia’s presidential race tightened sharply on Saturday as overnight counting yielded big wins for incumbent President Levy Mwanawasa, spurring his main rival to warn of ”ghastly consequences” if any poll fraud was detected, newspapers said. Populist opposition leader Michael Sata had staked out a solid lead in the polls on Friday, amid tensions more than 24 hours after polls closed.
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/ 29 September 2006
Zambian opposition hopes jumped on Friday following the copper-rich country’s tightly fought presidential race as one government-owned newspaper forecast a major victory for populist challenger Michael Sata. The Zambia Daily Mail said Sata and his Patriotic Front appeared to be running well in front of incumbent Levy Mwanawasa.
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/ 28 September 2006
Zambia went to the polls on Thursday to elect a new president after a razor-tight race pitting the internationally respected incumbent against a fiery populist who has promised to give impoverished Zambians a bigger share of their nation’s copper riches. Voters began gathering well before dawn and stood patiently outside polling stations in downtown Lusaka, slowly filing in as voting officially began after 6am.
Southern Africa’s Aids pandemic, the world’s worst, is being fuelled primarily by low condom use among people with multiple concurrent sexual partners and low levels of male circumcision, a study said on Monday. The report said men’s sexual attitudes and behaviours, intergenerational sex and high levels of gender and sexual violence were also to blame for the rapid spread of the disease.
The collapse of global trade talks is bad news for Africa, condemning the world’s poorest continent to an uncertain future of high tariffs and lagging competitiveness, officials and experts said on Monday. World Trade Organisation chief Pascal Lamy was expected to formally announce the end of the Doha round of talks on Monday.