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/ 26 November 2007
A 14-year-old New Zealand girl nearly lost her eyesight when her eyes were gouged by relatives in a Maori exorcism ceremony in which her cousin died, a report said on Monday. The girl is recovering after emergency operations to save her sight after relatives scratched at her eyes to remove the devil.
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/ 26 November 2007
More than 8 000 Kenyans have been executed or tortured to death since 2002 when police launched a crackdown on a banned, politically-linked sect, a group of Kenyan lawyers said on Sunday. Security forces launched a crackdown on the Mungiki sect after it was banned in March 2002.
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/ 26 November 2007
Constable Francis Rasuge was murdered due to her refusal to be a slave in a relationship, North West Premier Edna Molewa said on Sunday. Speaking at the launch of the 16 Days of Activism campaign against abuse in Maboloka, Molewa said Rasuge typified the pain of being a woman in South Africa.
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/ 26 November 2007
At least three people were killed and 45 injured when powerful earthquakes struck off the coast of Sumbawa island in central Indonesia, a health ministry official said on Monday. Several buildings, including a health clinic, collapsed in the island’s Bima district, said Rustam Pakaya, the head of the health ministry’s crisis centre.
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/ 26 November 2007
Chinese leaders hailed images sent back from from the country’s first lunar satellite on Monday, saying they showed their nation had thrust itself into the front ranks of global technological powers. Premier Wen Jiabao, visiting the scientists who have guided the probe Chang’e 1 into space and around the moon, proclaimed the mission a complete success.
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/ 26 November 2007
A rising tide of travellers seeking out the new frontier of Egyptian tourism is threatening priceless rock art preserved for millennia in one of the most-isolated reaches of the Sahara. In Egypt’s south-west corner, straddling the borders of Sudan and Libya, the elegant paintings of prehistoric man and beast in the mountains of Gilf Kabir and Jebel Ouenat are as stunning in their simplicity as anything by Picasso.
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/ 26 November 2007
Boardroom politics and reshuffling happen all the time, usually because of personal differences or conflicting strategic visions. In the past two years there have been numerous chief executives who have resigned for "personal reasons" or "to spend more time with the family". These reasons are often used as euphemisms by executives who no longer see eye to eye with the rest of the board.
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/ 26 November 2007
The night Alan Johnston was taken hostage in Gaza, the kidnappers’ leader told him he would one day go free. "And," the masked figure in robes told the BBC reporter, "you will write a book about it, and get married." On July 4, 114 days later, to Johnston’s inexpressible relief, the first of these three predictions came true. And now, possibly to his slight surprise, the second is coming true too.
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/ 26 November 2007
One in five of the tens of thousands of young children who die each year in South Africa probably suffocate to death, drowning from pus-filled lungs as a result of pneumonia. Yet more than two-thirds of these deaths could be prevented if all children under five were given a vaccine that protects against the most common bacterial cause of pneumonia — the pneumococcus.
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/ 26 November 2007
With inflation reported at close to 15Â 000%, a quarter of the population in need of food aid and a currency so worthless even the government charges for services in foreign currency, no sitting leader should win an election. Unless, of course, he is Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. Hard as it may be for many of his critics to figure out, especially those outside Zimbabwe, Mugabe has an open road to a sixth successive term as leader.