Zimbabwe’s morgues are filling up. The families of those who are dying cannot afford to pay their medical bills any longer, so relatives register the sick under false names. When they die, the bodies cannot be claimed. The practice is just one of the increasingly desperate measures Zimbabweans are taking to survive.
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African National Congress deputy president Jacob Zuma and the French arms company Thint on Friday opposed any attempt to obtain documents from Mauritius, media reports said. They filed their heads of arguments in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Friday.
Bus drivers are set to go on strike following the collapse of a three-month-long negotiation process, the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union said on Friday. ”Labour demands an across-the-board increase of 13%, while bus owners are prepared to give a 5% increment,” read a statement.
The body of an elderly woman was found on Friday and rescue workers were still searching for 10 more people who were washed away during floods in Inanda, north of Durban. Netcare 911 spokesperson Chris Botha the body was found in a small river in the area. The floods also caused disruptions in the Durban area.
Wartime French Resistance hero Lucie Aubrac, who famously rescued her husband in a daring attack on a German convoy, died on March 14 in a Paris hospital at the age of 94. In 1943, Aubrac was with a group of fighters who ambushed a truck bearing Raymond Aubrac and 13 other resistance members from Gestapo headquarters in Lyon.
It may be called Coca-Cola, but though the drink uses the name of the coca leaf, its maker shies away from confirming whether the leaf is one of its ingredients. Now Bolivian coca farmers want to reclaim the leaf as part of their country’s cultural heritage by forcing the United States drinks giant to change its brand name.
The killing of a British soldier in Iraq by an American pilot was a "criminal, unlawful act" that was tantamount to manslaughter, a coroner ruled on Friday. The family of Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull, who died in March 2003, wept as they were told at the inquest in Oxford that it was "an entirely avoidable tragedy".
Pakistani police fired tear gas, detained opposition leaders and ransacked the offices of a major television station on Friday as protests escalated over the ousting of the country’s top judge. Riot police smashed into the station’s offices after editors refused to stop transmitting pictures of police clashing with protesters.
As the Democratic Alliance welcomed a decision by the Public Protector, Auditor General and director of public prosecutions to separately investigate new areas of concern around the arms deal, the Independent Democrats said it meant ”absolutely nothing”. Public Protector Lawrence Mushwana, National Prosecuting Authority head Vusi Pikoli and Auditor General Terence Nombembe met on Thursday evening.
Shopkeepers in Pretoria’s city centre barricaded their stores on Friday as a few thousand protesting students, demanding free education, marched to Pretoria Station after handing over a memorandum to education officials. The students belonged to the Congress of South African Students.