Somali officials on Monday urged tough action against pirates holding a French yacht after an elite French army unit was placed on standby to intervene if negotiations failed. The local governor in Somalia’s breakaway northern region of Puntland, Musa Ghelle Yusuf, said he would be "happy … to see the pirates killed".
Lawyers for an award-winning <i>New York Times</i> journalist and a Briton held in a Zimbabwe jail complained on Monday that they were being given the run-around as their clients spent a fifth day behind bars. Meanwhile, two South African satellite technicians were formally charged with defeating the ends of justice.
A Zimbabwean court has postponed until Tuesday a ruling on the opposition’s legal bid to force the immediate publication of the March 29 presidential election results, lawyers said. ”The matter has been postponed to tomorrow,” opposition lawyer Alec Muchadehama told journalists outside the High Court in Harare.
Eskom has signed a five-year agreement to import an additional 250MW of power from Mozambique’s Cahora Bassa hydroelectric dam, the company announced on Monday. ”We are trying to squeeze as much capacity out of every resource,” said Eskom spokesperson Andrew Etzinger. The agreement was signed on Thursday April 3.
Julius Malema has been elected as African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) president at the league’s national conference at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein. Malema received 1Â 883 votes, it was announced on Monday, while the other candidate, Saki Mofokeng, received 1Â 696.
The murder trial of Najwa Petersen started in Cape Town on Monday with her advocate demanding that the state provide more details of the allegations against her. Klaus von Lieres und Wilkau brought the application before Petersen and her three co-accused were asked to plead in the Cape High Court.
The Los Angeles Times on Monday retracted a story that linked hip-hop mogul Sean ”Diddy” Combs to the 1994 shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur, admitting that the report relied on fake FBI documents. The move came three weeks after the paper’s website carried a lengthy story by Pulitzer Prize-winner Chuck Philips.
An Egyptian diplomat’s family living in Groenkloof was held up at gunpoint and robbed over the weekend, Pretoria police said on Monday. ”Four suspects entered the house after they held up the guard. They then held up the family and robbed them of household goods and jewellery, then fled the scene.
Passengers jumped from a burning bus on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast on Monday, a provincial transport official said. Zinhle Mngomezulu said the Olympic bus was hired by the family of provincial agriculture minister Mtolephi Mthimkulu for his daughter’s wedding and reception.
Climate change is one of the factors causing an increase in the incidence of diseases like malaria and dengue fever, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday. At least 150Â 000 more people are dying each year of malaria, diarrhoea, malnutrition and floods, all of which can be traced to climate change.