The substance that Zaphanias Mathe, father of prisoner Annanias Mathe, tried to smuggle to his son was not lethal, the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court heard on Thursday. The 80-year-old Mathe appeared in court on Thursday only to hear that his case was postponed to July 30.
The tiny Southern African kingdom of Lesotho has declared a state of emergency over worsening food shortages caused by a drought that is threatening the food supplies of hundreds of thousands of citizens. More than 400Â 000 people are predicted to be in need of relief supplies by the end of the year.
A major Somali peace meeting resumed in Mogadishu on Thursday, hours after explosions echoed in the capital’s biggest market in the heaviest fighting in 15 days of non-stop violence. ”The conference has started. Prime Minister [Ali Mohamed] Gedi has arrived. The explosions will not deter us,” a security source said.
Brazil’s deadliest air disaster provoked anger over safety conditions in the aviation sector as rescuers on Thursday pulled more bodies from the burned-out wreckage. All 186 passengers and crew aboard the Airbus 320 were believed to have been killed in Tuesday’s fiery crash at São Paulo’s Cagonhas airport, along with a number of people on the ground.
The Spanish coast guard was searching on Thursday for about 50 Africans whose wooden boat capsized as the would-be illegal migrants neared the end of a voyage to the Canary Islands. Coast guard boats picked up 48 survivors after their narrow boat overturned about 142km south-west of the resort island of Tenerife.
The BBC suspended some senior editors on Thursday after the public broadcaster unearthed a string of fake phone-in competitions that tarnished its reputation and torpedoed the trust of viewers. It is the biggest crisis faced by the BBC since it locked horns with the British government over its coverage of Iraq.
Chinese actress-turned-director Xu Jinglei became the world’s most widely read blogger this month when her blog logged 100-million page views within about 600 days. And Xu, who has a reputation for a high intellect and integrity, has done it without writing about sex or providing a catalogue of kiss-and-tell stories.
The drunk-driving case against Judge Nkola Motata of the Pretoria High Court was postponed in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Thursday. Motata was arrested on January 5 after crashing his car into a wall in Hurlingham in Johannesburg.
Zanzibar will soon privatise its clove industry in a bid to revive what was once the Indian Ocean Islands’ main foreign exchange earner, the archipelago’s finance minister said on Thursday. Cloves were once the main foreign exchange earner on the so called ”spice islands”, but the industry collapsed in the 1980’s.
Inspectors have found that the Mittal Steel company contravenes environmental laws at their facilties in Vereeniging, the Environment Affairs and Tourism Department said on Thursday. Spokesperson Mava Scott said some of the company’s activities had been taking place without proper environmental authorisation.