A fire that broke out this week at Zimbabwe’s only newsprint producer has crippled production, the official Herald daily said on Thursday. Newsprint for the handful of newspapers still operating in Zimbabwe comes from the eastern border city of Mutare, which lies close to a number of timber plantations.
The continued threat of sanctions against Sudan will only hamper progress towards deploying a hybrid African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force to Darfur, the government said on Thursday. Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said that sanction threats against Khartoum were ”surprising” and unhelpful.
Cases of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) have more than quadrupled in the Western Cape in the past three months, the Cape Times reported on Thursday. Since World TB Day in March, 45 XDR-TB cases have been notified in the province. Eight people have died, according to provincial health department figures.
Lewis Hamilton may be the hottest property in Formula One, but he was brought back down to earth with a bump on Thursday while taking a go-kart for a spin around a central London square. A video on the BBC News website showed the Briton racing a customised Mercedes-McLaren kart around a tight circuit, only to overcook a right-hand bend.
Pakistani traders on Thursday announced a reward of 10-million rupees (%165 000) for anyone who beheads Salman Rushdie following Britain’s decision to award the novelist a knighthood. The announcement came during a protest by 200 traders at Aabpara market, one of the main bazaars in the capital, Islamabad.
Trade talks among the World Trade Organisation’s four most powerful members have failed because of their inability to agree on farm subsidy cuts, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said on Thursday. ”It was useless to continue the discussions based on the numbers that were on the table,” Amorim said at a news conference.
Some of London’s key landmarks and top hotels are to go dark for an hour on Thursday evening as the British capital does its bit for the fight against global warming and turns off its lights. The Houses of Parliament, luxury hotels like the Ritz, and key businesses will take part in the ”Lights Out” campaign.
Tens of thousands of people flocked to Glastonbury for the world’s biggest green-field arts and music festival on Thursday — and with rain falling and more forecast to come, mud lovers might not be disappointed. The festival is notorious for its torrential rain after three ”washout” years in 1997, 1998 and 2005.
Nigerian troops killed 12 suspected militants and freed an unspecified number of hostages in a dawn raid on an Italian-operated oil facility in the Niger Delta on Thursday, the army said. Italian oil giant Eni had said 16 Nigerian oil workers and 11 soldiers were being held hostage at the Ogbainbiri flow station since Sunday, but the army said they found only 11 oil workers.
Taliep Petersen’s wife, Najwa, received electric shock therapy before his murder last year and could relapse into psychosis if she remained in custody, the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court heard on Thursday. She also made an apparent suicide attempt some years ago, her psychiatrist said.