The body of an unidentified teenager was found in Soweto on Sunday close to where a yearly beach party, attended by thousands, was held at the township’s Power Park dam on Saturday night. Police said the girl, who has not yet been identified, had two stab wounds to her neck.
Climate change, environmental degradation and economic deprivation are among forces increasingly driving the dramatic growth in migration, the head of the United Nations refugee agency said on Monday, pointing to desertification, rising sea levels, water shortages and political conflicts.
UBS AG, the world’s largest wealth manager, unveiled $3,4-billion in losses, has swept out senior managers and slashed jobs in one of the biggest casualties yet of the worldwide credit crunch. UBS said on Monday it will write down a net four billion Swiss francs ($3,42-billion) in its fixed-income portfolio and elsewhere.
At least eight Yemeni soldiers were killed in a volcanic eruption on an island off the country’s Red Sea coast, the government said on Monday. A Defence Ministry official said the western part of the island had "collapsed" following the eruption. Yemen’s oil minister said several earthquakes felt on Sunday had triggered the eruption.
Johannesburg will stage a 46664 HIV/Aids awareness concert on World Aids Day for the first time, former president Nelson Mandela announced on Monday. Mandela said the concert, which will take place on December 1 at Ellis Park stadium, will feature international and local artists.
Police investigating this weekend’s nail-bomb attack in the Maldives, which injured a dozen foreign tourists, have now arrested 10 people, officials said on Monday. ”Some of them were trying to flee the country and were apprehended at the airport,” said Mohamed Shareef, a Maldives government spokesman.
A five-year-old boy stabbed by his father in KwaZulu-Natal’s Umlazi suburb on Sunday night died in hospital shortly after midday on Monday, Umlazi police said. The 40-year-old man told police he believed his son was ”an animal” and that he was defending himself when he attacked his son.
Malawi, one of Africa’s poorest nations, said on Monday that despite recent efforts to grow the economy, it would be unable to meet the United Nations target date of halving poverty by 2015. A welfare-monitoring survey conducted by the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development indicated that poverty dropped to 45% in Malawi in 2006, from 53,9% in 1998.
South Africa’s first solar-powered traffic lights were switched on in Cape Town at noon on Monday. Located at the intersection of Edna Street and Montagu’s Gift Road, south of Ottery, the four pairs of lights draw their power, via batteries, from solar panels on top of poles.
The deaths of four miners in a rockfall forced a halt to production at AngloGold Ashanti’s Mponeng underground mine on Monday while safety checks were carried out, the company said. Increasing deaths at South Africa’s deep and treacherous underground mines have thrust safety into the spotlight in a country where about 200 miners are killed in accidents every year.