The Eastern Cape government has rejected a claim by a suspended hospital official that 200 babies have been dying every month at East London’s two largest hospitals. The former deputy manager of the East London Hospital Complex, Dr Nokuzola Ntshona, made the claim in an interview published in the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>.
Black-owned investment company Shanduka broke its silence on Friday over the appointment of Bruce Campbell as executive chairperson at Alexander Forbes. The Black Management Forum on Wednesday condemned Campbell’s being appointed to oversee a ”competent black CEO”.
President Thabo Mbeki and the opposition leader, Helen Zille of the Democratic Alliance, crossed swords on Friday in the internet letters they send each week to their supporters. Both were talking about sacked deputy minister of health Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge.
Hurricane Dean tore through the eastern Caribbean islands of St Lucia and Martinique on Friday, ripping the roofs from a hospital and homes, felling trees and flinging boulders and a boat on to roads. The first hurricane of the Atlantic season, packing 160km/h winds, tore the roof off the children’s ward at Victoria Hospital in Castries.
A crowd burned a church compound on Friday in one of Africa’s largest slums after a long-running land dispute flared into violence, witnesses and police said. Nobody was injured. Police said there was a dispute between the local Nubian community, which is mainly Muslim, and the Presbyterian Church over land ownership.
Peruvian rescue teams scrambled on Friday to find survivors in the disaster zone of a powerful earthquake that killed about 500 people and where an aftershock of 6,0 magnitude struck on Friday, the United States Geological Survey and witnesses said. The main quake of 8,0 magnitude hit on Wednesday.
Fires that engulfed five Mpumalanga municipalities, killing an old man and injuring a number of others, have been extinguished, the Department of Local Government and Housing said on Friday. Mopping-up operations were under way at the Mbombela, Albert Luthuli, Emakhazeni, Umjindi and Bushbuckridge municipalities.
Fervent efforts are being made by Nkosinathi Joyi’s camp to prevent the International Boxing Organisation (IBO) from stripping him of his mini-flyweight title — this after reports emerged that the IBO was on the verge of relieving the unbeaten East London fighter of the title for failing to defend it since winning it in November last year.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK: Shaun de Waal reviews the latest movie to become a stage musical to be then translated back to film in musical form, Hairspray
The BBC said on Friday its Russian-language FM broadcasts have been taken off the air by its Moscow distributor, which said its programmes were ”foreign propaganda”. The decision leaves the BBC’s Russian-language services available only on medium and shortwave broadcasts, the BBC said in a press release.