Hundreds of people have rushed to a village in eastern India to see a male calf defy its herbivore nature by eating live chicks. Poultry farmer Ajit Ghosh said he discovered the calf’s strange behaviour after dozens of his newborn chickens went missing from his combined cow shed and chicken coop.
As the world marks International Women’s Day on Thursday, under the theme of Ending Impunity for Violence against Women and Girls, activists in Kenya claim there is much to do in ensuring that abusers are punished. They worry about the low rate of convictions in rape and abuse cases.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Thursday accused the government of stubbornly refusing to admit that the affirmative action policy is at the core of South Africa’s skills crisis, and proposed ways to address the crisis. DA spokesperson Mark Lowe emphasised, however, that the DA is not opposed to affirmative action to redress the imbalances of the past.
Accountants and IT experts will assist the Department of Home Affairs to address problems threatening to bring the department to its knees, Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said on Thursday. Briefing the media in Cape Town, she said a support-intervention team found that the department had serious management problems.
Vodacom workers — members of the Communications Workers’ Union (CWU) — will embark on a strike from March 12, the union said on Thursday. Spokesperson Mfanafuthi Sithebe said the industrial action followed an unresolved dispute on the recognition of CWU by Vodacom. Sithebe said the union had given Vodacom a 48-hour notice on Wednesday on the planned industrial action.
The United Nations World Food Programme on Thursday expressed deep concern over erratic weather patterns in Southern Africa, which have devastated harvest prospects for millions of people and could spell yet another year of widespread food shortages. Many parts of the region have been struck by devastating floods, which have destroyed tens of thousands of hectares of crops.
Ugandan peacekeepers suffered their first casualties in an ambush by Somali insurgents after landing this week to help the country’s interim government restore stability, an officer said on Thursday. Captain Paddy Ankunda said two soldiers were hurt when unknown gunmen attacked the troops late on Wednesday in Mogadishu.
South Africa is to pay a portion of Liberia’s debt to the African Development Bank (ADB), an amount exceeding R26-million, government communications head Themba Maseko said on Thursday. Briefing the media after the Cabinet’s fortnightly meeting on Wednesday, he said the meeting had approved a request from the ADB”.
South African maize prices have surged by up to 18% in the past week alone, and traders say the rally may still have some way to go after one of the driest seasons in years. An industry group has drawn comparisons with events five years ago, when soaring prices forced the government to provide aid to millions of poor South Africans for whom maize is a staple.
Investigators combed through the burned-out skeleton of an Indonesian airliner on Thursday as a senior police official cited human error as a possible cause of a deadly onboard inferno. The Garuda Airlines plane caught fire after landing at speed at Yogyakarta airport and careering off the runway into a rice paddy, killing 21 people.