Nigerian militants used dynamite to blow up the home of vice-president-elect Goodluck Jonathan in southern Bayelsa State early on Wednesday, killing two police officers, police said. Jonathan was not in his village of Otu-Eke at the time of the attack on his country home, federal police spokesperson Haz Iwendi said.
Lunchtime at an upmarket Kenyan safari lodge in what should be the slow off-season, and the dining room is packed with tourists from all over the world. Chattering excitedly in many languages as they watch antelope, buffalo and a giraffe grazing just a short distance away across a stone terrace, they are driving an unprecedented boom in a key sector of East Africa’s biggest economy.
New Zealand effectively outlawed smacking children on Wednesday by removing a statutory defence for parents. A private Bill sponsored by a Green Party lawmaker, which removed an existing legal defence of ”reasonable force” to correct a child, was passed by an overwhelming majority.
SA Rugby has gagged Springbok coach Jake White, who will not be allowed to grant media interviews until next Monday. ”This is an instruction from SA Rugby,” the organisation’s media manager, Vusi Kama, told Johannesburg morning newspaper Beeld.
South African supermarket group Shoprite said on Wednesday it had ended talks on a proposed ,14-billion buyout from private equity firm Brait, which sent its shares up as much as 5%. Brait’s bid for Shoprite late last year has been mired in controversy, with minority shareholders unhappy about the price.
Luke Watson’s father, Dan ”Cheeky” Watson, believes that a sinister ”third force” holds power in South African rugby, according to the Star newspaper. In a report on Wednesday, the paper stated that Cheeky felt that his son was paying for his own political activism. Cheeky, who played rugby in the townships in the 1970s, turned his back on Springbok rugby due to political beliefs.
Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has been arrested in a row with police officers over his dog, a police source said on Wednesday. The 44-year-old Portuguese soccer boss was held late on Tuesday after an animal health official and two police officers went to his central London home to remove his dog, the Sun newspaper reported.
Petsana at Reitz in the Free State was quiet on Wednesday morning after protests and a stayaway from work the day before, police said. Sergeant Mmako Mophiring said that according to police on the scene, schooling was going on as usual in Petsana, and workers had returned to work.
A remote-controlled bomb killed four African Union peacekeepers from Uganda and wounded five more when it hit their convoy in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, on Wednesday, the AU said. It was the first attack of its kind against the mission’s troops, which previously had only been shot at, said an AU security source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Residents of an East London suburb are objecting to a Buffalo City plan to build ”temporary houses” on their doorstep, the Dispatch Online reported on Wednesday. Despite furious objections from Braelynn residents, Buffalo City municipality chief planner Craig Sam has thrown his weight behind the plan, saying the objections are ”invalid”.