Twenty-two people, most of them Togolese sports officials, were killed when a passenger helicopter exploded and crashed on Sunday at Sierra Leone’s main international airport. The helicopter was operated by Paramount Airlines, which shuttles passengers between Freetown and Lungi airport.
Australia coach John Connolly is set to rest players for Saturday’s test against Fiji in Perth, keeping his powder dry before the opening Tri-Nations clash with the Springboks. Connolly sees the game against in-form South Africa in Cape Town on June 16 as the first genuine test of the year for the Wallabies.
President Thabo Mbeki on Sunday called for enhanced legitimacy through representation and accountability as well as recapitalisation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He said low-income countries would continue to draw heavily on a wide range of macro- and micro-economic policy advice linked to financing needs.
A Somali Islamist group on Monday claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that targeted the Horn of Africa country’s prime minister. Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi has accused al-Qaeda of being behind Sunday’s suicide bombing that killed seven people outside his home in Mogadishu.
The trial of Charles Taylor — the former president of Liberia and the first former African leader to face an international court — opens in The Hague on Monday where he is accused of war crimes during the diamond-fuelled conflict in neighbouring Sierra Leone. The prosecutor will open the trial, which is expected to last for a year, by detailing 11 war crimes charges against Taylor.
Continuity has always been the name of the game in Nigerian politics and this time is no different. The outgoing president, Olusegun Obasanjo, made much of the fact that he oversaw the first civilian-to-civilian transition in the nation’s history, but what does this amount to?
Farmers in East Africa are set to enter the lucrative international organic produce market after launching their own seal of quality for organic products. The farmers hope the new East African Organic Products Standard (EAOS) — launched at the East African Organic Conference in Dar es Salaam this week — will boost sales for struggling farmers in the region and give their produce an exclusivity they can market at premium prices.
At first glance Robert Zoellick, who George Bush nominated to be the next president of the World Bank, could not be more different than his predecessor, Paul Wolfowitz. While both men have been at the heart of Republican-dominated Washington for many years, with careers stretching back into the term of the current President Bush’s father, the two have widely differing personalities.
In a circular to its stakeholders, the organisation’s executive officers, Dorothy Brislin and Tsikani Mthembu, wrote: "Unless a rescue injection of funds occurs within the next few days, the board’s decision to liquidate FRU will proceed." By Tuesday, the pair had already made a desperate plea to Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan for urgent intervention to prevent liquidation.
I must say that I am gobsmacked by the responses in these pages to a couple of observations I made in this column relating to the new Chinatown in Cyrildene, east Johannesburg. On reflection, I must have been losing it. I was guilty of becoming complacent, and writing as if regular readers were fully aware of my irreverent style. Bad mistake.