The past three years have seen a powerful combination of positive factors contributing to a buoyant local economy — structural reform, high and rising commodity prices, low inflation and historically low interest rates — putting South Africa on a growth trajectory not seen since the 1960s.
Chinese cemeteries are selling paper replicas of Viagra pills to be burned for dead relatives as a wish for satisfying sex in the afterlife, state media reported on Wednesday. Customers are snapping up the paper Viagra ahead of the annual Tombsweeping Festival on April 5, the Nanjing Morning News reported.
A man who ripped out his wife’s eyes in a fit of rage was sentenced by a French court to 30 years behind bars on Tuesday. Mohamed Hadfi (31) tore out his 23-year-old wife Samira Bari’s eyes following a heated argument in their apartment in the southern French city of Nimes in July 2003 after she refused to have sex with him.
Police in Central America have scored a double blow against drug traffickers by seizing more than 19 tonnes of cocaine and ,9-million in cash in separate operations. On Sunday, Panamanian police intercepted a boat laden with one of the largest hauls of cocaine on record, 19,6 tonnes.
Pressure mounted on the United States Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, to resign on Tuesday in spite of a phone call from President George Bush to reassure him his job was safe. The Democratic-led Congress stepped up its campaign to claim Gonzales’s scalp in a row over alleged political interference in the legal system.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that Poland is failing to guarantee access to lawful abortions in a test case hailed as a victory for women across Europe and a blow to the deeply conservative government in Warsaw. Poland practises one of the most restrictive abortion regimes in Europe.
Many of the world’s biggest rivers, including the Nile, Ganges, Yangtze and Danube, are facing catastrophic collapse due to man-made problems, according to a leading conservation group. A wasteful attitude to water use and inadequate protection of rivers has destroyed ecosystems while threatening the livelihoods of people living in river basins.
Africa’s first power plant to run on methane gas extracted from a rubbish dump began generating electricity in Durban on Tuesday. The plant, built with funding from the French Development Bank, was officially opened by eThekwini mayor Obed Mlaba at the city’s Mariannhill landfill site.
The United States has urged South Africa to help international efforts to end a violent crackdown on the political opposition to Zimbabwe’s long-time ruler, Robert Mugabe, a senior official said on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Zimbabwe said the opposition to Mugabe has reached a tipping point in that country.
Workers at diamond miner De Beers in Kimberley will on Thursday protest against planned retrenchments, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said. The company has retrenched close to 2 000 employees in the past two years, said the NUM’s regional secretary in the Northern Cape, Tshimane Montoedi.