Rapper Snoop Dogg has been refused entry into Australia because of his extensive criminal record, the immigration minister said on Thursday. It is the second time this year the troubled rapper has been barred from entering another country. Snoop Dogg was due to fly into Sydney this week to co-host the MTV Australia Video Music Awards.
Former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, exiled in South Africa since his 2004 ouster, received a doctorate in African languages on Wednesday in a ceremony attended by President Thabo Mbeki. A university spokesperson said that Aristide had become fluent in Zulu since being appointed an honorary research fellow.
South Africa’s National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) boarded a Korean fishing vessel at 3am on Thursday to treat the ship’s chef, who had accidentally stabbed himself in the stomach in heavy seas. The NSRI’s station commander at Port Elizabeth, Ian Gray, said the station was placed on alert on Tuesday.
A high-school boy was shot and wounded in a fight between a group of pupils in Eldorado Park, Johannesburg, paramedics said on Thursday. ”It is believed that the boy who was shot was a friend of the boy who fired the shot. He got hit in the cross-fire,” Netcare 911 spokesperson Mark Stokoe said.
”If ever anyone thought Orlando Pirates chairman Irvin Khoza was passing the buck when he explained his club’s poor run at the start of the season as a result of the cyclical nature of the game, the timing of Saturday’s fixture should vindicate him.” The outcome of the derby has huge implications for Chiefs, writes Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya.
The farewells and testimonials have been effusive, befitting someone of the stature of Brian Charles Lara. But, behind the carefully complimentary prose and the staggering, almost numbing, statistics, there have been both a tension and a hollowness, writes Tom Eaton.
One of Africa’s leading Aids specialists has accused the Gambian government of covertly obtaining blood tests from his laboratory to try to convince the world of the efficacy of the Gambian president’s herbal remedy for the disease. The president claimed this year that tests had proved that his remedy worked.
A new law for Mexico City permitting abortion on demand in early pregnancy was hailed on Wednesday as a landmark in the fight for women’s rights across Latin America. The legislation instructs local health services to provide abortions during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, no questions asked.
If you have ever wanted to be in two places at once, the answer may be sitting in a Japanese laboratory, muttering, flinching and scowling at passers-by. Geminoid is a modern variant on an old idea, a humanoid robot designed in his creator’s image, down to the tiniest of details.
More than four years after an actor and part-time waitress was found dead of a single gunshot wound in the hallway of Phil Spector’s palatial home, the legendary 1960s record producer was on Wednesday described as ”sinister and deadly” on the first day of his trial in Los Angeles.