The author Breyten Breytenbach said Senegalese police moved in on Friday morning to evict the Gorée Institute, of which he is director, from its offices on the former slave island of the same name. Though he said he does not know the reason for the eviction, it comes amid privatisation of state properties in Senegal.
Talks to boost chances for the conclusion of a global trade pact in 2006 turned to the thorny issue of agriculture in Ukunda, Kenya, on Friday with a landmark World Trade Organisation (WTO) ruling against United States cotton subsidies weighing heavily in discussions.
Five people suspected of involvement in last year’s Beslan school massacre have been killed by Russian authorities while resisting arrest, an official said on Friday. Four suspects were also said to have been arrested in an operation that targeted some of the alleged organisers of the hostage-taking raid at the school in the town of Beslan, in southern Russia, last September.
Over a quarter of the rapes reported in Johannesburg’s inner city were gang rapes, a study to be released on International Women’s Day has found. ”We found that more than one in four of rapes reported at these stations involved multiple perpetrators,” the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation said in a statement on Friday.
The first morning of the first Castle Lager/MTN Test between South Africa and Zimbabwe at Sahara Park, Newlands, saw two South African players reach significant career milestones on Friday. Makhaya Ntini took his 200th Test wicket, and Mark Boucher reached 300 Test dismissals. Ntini is the 11th current Test player to take more than 200 wickets.
Toxic waste washed on to Somalia’s coastline by last December’s tsumani have spawned diseases bearing symptoms of radioactive exposure in villagers along the shorelines of the shattered African nation, the United Nations Environment Programme said on Friday.
Togo’s electoral commission has set April 24 as the date for presidential elections, news reports said on Friday. The way for elections was cleared when Faure Gnassingbe stepped down as president last weekend after heavy international pressure.
Swedish public television (SVT) mistakenly published an obituary for Pope John Paul II on its website, where it remained for more than five hours before it was taken down, the broadcasting company said on Friday. "This was a very unfortunate mistake," SVT spokesperson Johanna Niemi said.
A Jewish settlement security chief was caught red-handed stealing thousands of chickens in the West Bank with two Palestinian accomplices disguised in carnival masks overnight, police said on Friday. The 42-year-old man was arrested along with a 20-year-old fellow settler and two Palestinians from east Jerusalem, said Israeli police.
Mukhtaran Bibi thought her nightmare was over when the men who gang-raped her — on orders from village elders — were sentenced to death more than two years ago. But on Thursday the nightmare began again. The victim of Pakistan’s most notorious rape case wept bitterly after a court in the southern city of Multan overturned the verdict against the rapists.