Virgin Atlantic said on Monday it will begin offering daily flights to Nairobi from London Heathrow in June. Virgin chairperson Richard Branson told reporters in Nairobi the airline expected to carry about 100Â 000 passengers to Kenya in the first year. ”If it is successful we hope to go up to two planes a day,” he said.
A suicide bomber killed at least six worshippers at a mosque in central Baghdad on Monday, blowing himself up during morning prayers. The attacker tried to enter the mosque around lunchtime but detonated his device when guards tried to search him, police said, adding that 32 other people had been injured.
South Africa is looking to Russia to acquire nuclear and space technology, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said on Monday. Mlambo-Ngcuka said the trade between the two countries could be ”much better”, naming vehicle and chemical exports as areas that could improve drastically.
Aids patients in Zambia are abandoning their life-prolonging drugs in exchange for bogus cures that have hit the market in recent weeks. The Network of Zambian People Living with HIV/Aids said it has received reports that some of its members were stopping the use of antiretroviral drugs for fake cures being promoted in the media.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir must accept his proposals to augment the Darfur peacekeeping force, as he sent a new negotiating mission to Khartoum. "I regret that President Bashir has made numerous and dangerous objections to the proposals …," Ban said.
Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown and financial director Graham Maddock have been granted bail of R1-million each. The two men face fraud and theft charges involving just over R200-million from the Transport Sector Education and Training Authority. The ruling was made on Monday by Cape Town magistrate Eric Louw, who also ordered that they surrender their passports to the Scorpions.
Prospective United States voters anxious to know John McCain’s favourite television show or to be friends with Barack Obama now have a chance. The popular social networking site MySpace.com on Sunday launched a section dedicated to the 2008 presidential election.
South Africa’s decision to oppose a request for a United Nations Security Council briefing on the crisis in Zimbabwe is indefensible, said Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon. ”[It] is another example of South Africa bending over backwards to defend [Zimbabwe President] Robert Mugabe’s increasingly tyrannical rule,” he said in a statement on Monday.
More than 1,6-million people are dying every year from the effects of breathing in poisonous smoke from animal dung, wood and coal used for cooking, experts said on Monday. More than three billion people rely on the burning of solid fuels to prepare their meals because they cannot afford cleaner alternatives.
South African business confidence in the retail sector declined in the first quarter of 2007 but remained surprisingly robust despite higher interest rates, a new survey showed on Monday. The Bureau for Economic Research retail confidence index fell to 87 index points from a record high 91 previously.