One of the two cargo freighters hijacked off the Somali coast this week was a German owned vessel registered in Gibraltar, a Kenyan maritime official said Friday. The MV Lehmann Timber seized on Wednesday in the Gulf of Aden, was managed by Kehdisgerland GMBH.
President Thabo Mbeki called on G8 countries on Friday to follow through on promises of support for Africa’s socio-economic rescue plan Nepad. ”The other G8 members have got to respond in the manner that Japan has,” Mbeki said at the end of a three-day development conference in Yokohama, Japan.
A New Zealand man has been convicted for assaulting a teenager with a hedgehog after asking him if he wanted to "wear a hedgehog helmet". William Singalargh (27) was fined for assault and offensive behaviour by a court in the east coast North Island city of Whakatane after a more serious charge of assault with a weapon — the hedgehog — was dropped.
A Japanese man puzzled by food mysteriously disappearing from his refrigerator got a shock when he found out a woman had been living in his home for months without permission, police said on Friday. The 57-year-old man living alone — or so he thought — installed a security camera and called the police when he saw images of someone walking around his home while he was out.
Forty-seven people were arrested for public violence on Thursday after a protest against Anglo Platinum’s relocation of bodies from a cemetery in Sekuruwe near Makopane turned violent. Limpopo police spokesperson Captain Sebotsaro Motadi said the protest started on Wednesday but only became violent at 6am on Thursday.
In a series of three ATM bombings in less than half a day in Gauteng, gangs of robbers on Friday morning made off with undisclosed sums of cash. In Strijdompark in Randburg, a Standard Bank ATM was blown up at the Motor City Centre, Gauteng police said. ATMs in Atteridgeville and Orange Farm were also targeted.
A complaint against the Daily Sun‘s reporting on the recent xenophobic attacks in Gauteng was submitted to the press ombudsman and the South African Human Rights Commission on Thursday. One of the major issues was the use of the term ”aliens” for immigrants by the newspaper.
North West agriculture minister Jan Serfontein and interest groups are to try to develop a standardised programme for working with predators. This follows a lion attack on Tuesday on the farm Uitspan, near Mafikeng. David Moloana (50), of Mareetsane village, was killed while cleaning a drinking pen situated in a lion cage.
African leaders and Japan pledged on Friday to get to work to ramp up food production, calling it ”critical” for the continent’s development amid a crisis over soaring prices. Japan also pledged to step up foreign aid and investment to Africa, at a three-day summit with 51 African nations in Yokohama, near Tokyo.
For years television was her main form of entertainment and view of the world as she lived in an underground prison. Now the kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch is to become a TV talk show host herself — a career of which she dreamed during her incarceration.