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/ 20 November 2007
President Thabo Mbeki will not attend a Dakar summit aimed at accelerating an African initiative to increase government accountability and reduce poverty, his deputy minister of foreign affairs said on Tuesday. Mbeki had been expected to be among a group of African leaders gathering capital to discuss ways of improving the New Partnership for African Development (Nepad).
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/ 20 November 2007
A police sergeant sitting in a car at the Woodstock police station saw two men in a red BMW opening fire on police Inspector Lourens le Roux, the Cape High Court heard on Tuesday. It is alleged that the two men were being investigated by Le Roux for the earlier murder of Godfrey Hendricks, in an argument over a baseball cap.
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/ 20 November 2007
Relief workers and the Bangladesh military on Tuesday reached the last remaining pockets of the country devastated by a cyclone that killed nearly 3 500 people along the Bay of Bengal. It has taken five days to gain access to the hardest-hit areas in an operation involving helicopters, planes and boats.
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/ 20 November 2007
South Africa urged rich countries on Tuesday to provide the hardware required for the deployment of a hybrid United Nations-Africa peacekeeping force in the strife-torn Darfur region of western Sudan. The Darfur conflict between rebels and a pro-government militia has claimed an estimated 200 000 lives in the past four years.
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/ 20 November 2007
Bushmen in Botswana on Tuesday confirmed that they planned to return to court within a matter of weeks if the government continued to prevent them from returning home, Survival International said in a statement. ”Hundreds of letters signed by Bushmen were today [Tuesday] handed to Botswana’s Department of Wildlife, detailing their concerns,” the statement said.
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/ 20 November 2007
One of the most popular tourist destinations in China is waging a week-long campaign to hunt down wild pigs that have been frightening visitors to its famed West Lake, state media said on Tuesday. Professional hunting teams from the West Lake district of Hangzhou, the capital of the coastal province of Zhejiang, were under orders to shoot to kill the animals.
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/ 20 November 2007
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday warned that Moscow would not remain indifferent to Nato’s ”muscle-flexing” and said Russia’s nuclear forces would be ready for an adequate response to any aggressor. Putin said the Nato military alliance had built up its forces close to Russia’s borders.
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/ 20 November 2007
Pollution at the Vaal River has reached crisis proportions, an environmental scientist said on Tuesday. Claudia Holgate described the sewerage spillage running into the Vaal River as ”a crisis” at a meeting of Save the Vaal Environment held at the Vaal River Barrage Reservoir.
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/ 20 November 2007
Aid workers are calling it Africa’s biggest humanitarian crisis, but no one has to tell Fatima Usman how rapidly things have gone bad in Somalia. The slender 23-year-old’s son Mohamed died of hunger. So did her daughter Isha. ”I am praying to God that he will not take this baby yet,” she says, gently cradling the wizened face of Muhiadeen, her four-month-old son.
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/ 20 November 2007
A human rights group condemned Kenya on Tuesday for repatriating 18 Somali refugees who had already been turned away from Uganda despite the horrific security situation in their homeland. Ali-Amin Kimathi, chairperson of the Muslim Human Rights Forum, accused Kenyan police officers of beating some of the refugees.