The Social Development Department on Friday defended provisions in the Children’s Act giving access to contraceptives to children as young as 12. The department said it was concerned about ”misinterpretation” of the Act, certain sections of which came into effect last Sunday.
A major Nigerian opposition party that is challenging President Umaru Yar’Adua’s electoral victory in court has rejected an offer to join his government because it considers it illegitimate, a party spokesperson said on Friday. Yar’Adua invited the three main opposition parties to join his government in an effort to offset a perceived lack of legitimacy after the April polls.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on Friday told manufacturers to carry on with normal production despite an official price freeze, warning that his government would seize firms that stopped producing basic goods. Mugabe was addressing thousands of ruling Zanu-PF party supporters in Harare.
A former law student who murdered his ”friend” by bludgeoning him with a dumbbell and cutting off his genitals received an 18-year jail sentence on Friday. Pretoria High Court Judge Tholi Vilakazi sentenced Lebogang Frank Mahlakoana (24) for murdering 54-year-old William Henry Thomas.
Eleven people have been hospitalised after they came into contact with a parcel containing a white powder — possibly anthrax — at a post office in Alberton, south of Johannesburg, police said on Friday. Inspector Juanita Kilian said police had received a complaint from the post office at Jacqueline Mall in Randhart at about 10am about a ”suspicious” parcel.
Namibia’s annual seal hunting season started this week, over the protests of animal rights activists who say the practice is cruel. The government accused the activists of ”deliberately distorting information,” and said controlling the seal population was important for the fishing industry.
The Nigerian kidnappers of a three-year-old British girl have demanded money and negotiations to secure her release are about to start, the girl’s mother told Reuters on Friday. The toddler, Margaret Hill, was snatched on Thursday morning from the car in which she was being driven to school in Port Harcourt.
Thousands of Palestinians marched in Gaza on Friday for the funerals of 11 people, including nine militants from the ruling Hamas, who were killed in an Israeli raid into the central Gaza Strip a day earlier. The Israeli army said it had concluded an incursion into central Gaza near the Bureij and Maghazi refugee camps.
A Spanish woman who pulled the mask off a man as he tried to strangle her was astonished to discover the attacker was her estranged husband, Spanish media reported on Friday. The woman had thought the masked man, who burst into the bakery where she worked in the city of Valencia, was a robber.
Mitigation, mitigation, mitigation — the need for action to halt climate change will be hammered home at eight Live Earth concerts on seven continents on Saturday. In Johannesburg, that message has dictated the choice of materials in what is being billed as a carbon-neutral concert.