Suspected Islamist rebels killed five soldiers in an ambush on a military convoy east of Algiers on Wednesday, a security source said. The attack occurred near the town of Tizi Ouzou, 120km east of the capital, the source said, without giving further details.
Former Liberian president Charles Taylor funded and armed a rebel leader in neighbouring Sierra Leone, one of his top aides told a United Nations-backed war crimes court on Wednesday. Taylor is on trial for orchestrating rape, murder, mutilation and recruitment of child soldiers during the 1991 to 2002 Sierra Leone civil war.
Two New York men wheeled the corpse of their friend around the sidewalks of midtown Manhattan in an office chair in a failed attempt to cash his Social Security cheque, police said. Virgilio Cintron (66) had already died of natural causes when two of his friends, both aged 65, brought him to a cheque-cashing store on Tuesday.
A Port Elizabeth magistrate’s order that a woman with 203 previous convictions of fraud and one of theft be publicly shamed with a placard around her neck proclaiming her guilt and apologising to her victims has been set aside by the Grahamstown High Court as unconstitutional.
With a roar, Pitou the leopard bounded off into the African bushveld on Wednesday after a long flight from a Monaco zoo to her new home at an exclusive wildlife reserve. Her brother, Sirius, was more reluctant and had to be coaxed to leave his cage. The siblings had been handed over by Prince Albert of Monaco.
The Pan Africanist Youth Congress of Azania (Payco) has called for Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) president Letlapa Mphahlele to step down, accusing him of destroying the party. Payco president Hulisani Mmbara said on Wednesday: ”[Payco] has reached a conclusion that the [PAC] is facing a serious leadership crisis.”
At least two people have been eaten alive by a 6m-long crocodile in northern KwaZulu-Natal, police and wildlife officials said on Wednesday. Jozini police and KZN Ezemvelo Wildlife officials said they were investigating a report that a third person may have also been eaten alive by the same crocodile on Tuesday afternoon.
There were about 1 000 fewer teachers in North West province at the opening of schools on Wednesday as the provincial education department had not renewed their contracts, a teachers’ union claimed. But an education department spokesperson said no teacher shortages are expected in North West.
A British citizen working as a radio DJ in Taiwan conned three accommodation establishments during a short holiday in Cape Town, cheated a jeweller and a cellphone business, and ended his spree trying to take the police for a ride as well. This was heard in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday.
Ferarri’s new Formula One boss, Stefano Domenicali, is keen to put last season’s spy scandal behind him and look to the future. ”For the good of the sport we need to look forward; the past is the past,” he said in Italy at his first press conference as Ferrari Formula One chief, although admitting the spy scandal would be difficult to completely forget.