Zimbabwe’s government has promised to reduce monthly inflation to below 25% from the current 100% by year-end after signing a price and wage protocol with business and labour to halt a deep recession. The country is battling its worst economic crisis that has pushed inflation to over 3 700%.
Gunmen disguised as riot police have abducted four foreign workers from the residential compound of oil-services giant Schlumberger in Nigeria’s oil city Port Harcourt, authorities said on Saturday. Kidnapping has become an almost daily occurrence in the anarchic Niger Delta, home to Africa’s largest oil industry, and about 30 foreigners are now being held.
The next African National Congress (ANC) president should be biased towards the working class, gender sensitive and a unifier, said the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on Friday. The NUM said the government should own the mines to create employment and generate revenue towards education.
Venus Williams stood still, straight-faced and serious, during a TV interview right before she played in the French Open’s third round. Her opponent, Jelena Jankovic of Serbia, giggled while delivering her sound bite. She then kept right on smiling — when she stepped on court, when she hit spectacular shots, and, widest of all, when she won.
Former Liberian president Charles Taylor will answer for his alleged role in the decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone before a court in The Netherlands on Monday. But, despite the distance between the West African country and the court room in The Hague, the population of Sierra Leone will not be cut off from the process.
Tropical Storm Barbara strengthened in the Pacific Ocean on Friday and was expected to make landfall near the border between Mexico and Guatemala on Saturday without becoming a hurricane. Forecasters at the United States National Hurricane Centre in Miami said Barbara was located 350km south of the small oil port of Salina Cruz.
Jamaican police are to announce that Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer died of natural causes and was not murdered as they had initially stated, Britain’s Daily Mail said on Saturday. Citing a source close to the inquiry, the newspaper says Jamaican authorities will say they are no longer treating the death suspiciously.
Just when you thought the United States presidential race was crowded enough, Sharon Stone has decided to run for the White House. The Hollywood star has ditched her Democrat sympathies and hired George Bush’s former ad guru for her Republican campaign.
Jack Kevorkian, the United States assisted suicide advocate dubbed ”Dr Death”, stepped free from a Michigan prison on Friday with few words but plans for a media blitz to support his cause. Kevorkian (79) who says he assisted in about 130 deaths, had served eight years for a second-degree murder conviction.
Zimbabwe’s health delivery system has collapsed amid worsening shortages of nursing staff and a doctors strike, a doctors group said on Friday. Inadequate remuneration and unacceptable working conditions for health workers across the country have resulted in a crisis that has left the country’s major referral hospitals unable to function.