Riot police in Zambia arrested 49 students from the country’s biggest university in Lusaka who attempted to stage street protests against poor sanitation at their campus, police said on Thursday. ”Police arrested 15 female students and 34 males from the University of Zambia,” police spokesperson Chrispin Kapela said.
Jane Rosenthal reports on the winners of the M-Net Literary Awards for 2007.
The Cape Town Book Fair has achieved much in its second year, writes Darryl Accone.
In an edited extract from the Africa Remix catalogue, critic and exhibition curator Simon Njami looks at the place of the African artist in society and the quest by artists to own their own territories.
The Labour Court was expected to rule on Thursday on whether police, prisons and traffic officers could join a three-week public-sector strike. The Labour Court issued an interim interdict last Friday prohibiting members of the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union from taking part in the industrial action.
Workers in the quiet Japanese fishing village of Wada carved up two whales on Thursday, signalling the start of the summer whaling season despite international protests. Japan, which says whaling is a cherished cultural tradition, began scientific research whaling in 1987.
South Africa’s current account deficit narrowed to 7% of gross domestic product in the first quarter as lower oil imports offset a fall in mine exports to narrow the trade deficit, the central bank said on Thursday. The shortfall compared with a 7,8% deficit in the fourth quarter of 2006 and 5,7% in the third quarter.
South Africa’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is to lead an African Union (AU) fact-finding team to the Comoros after elections in the rebel Anjouan island. An AU ministerial committee has rejected the outcome of the Anjouan poll.
Families of foreign medics sentenced to death for infecting Libyan children with the virus that causes Aids urged European Union leaders in Brussels on Thursday to help clinch a deal. Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were convicted in December of deliberately infecting 426 children.
The JSE was higher at noon on Thursday, shrugging off a negative tone on overseas markets as investors piled in ahead of a futures close-out later in the day. However, traders said the local bourse was expected to follow overseas markets weaker after the close-out, which started at 12pm.