Heavy rains and floods have killed 33 people in the western Indian state of Rajasthan over the last three days, authorities said on Monday. Over 1Â 500 villages and several towns had been cut off by the rising waters, schools and colleges ordered shut in the lake city of Udaipur and electricity and telephone networks disrupted across the region, they said.
Two Somali men were found shot dead at a cash store in Khayelitsha, Cape Town police said on Monday. Superintendent Billy Jones said police found the bodies at the cash store in Bonga Drive at 9.45pm on Sunday. Police were told they had been robbed of cash by a group of men.
The government payment of R50Â 000 per vehicle in the taxi recapitalisation programme should be doubled or trebled and supplemented with a subsidy, the National Taxi Alliance said on Monday. The alliance said some taxi drivers are illegally overloading because they cannot afford the new standards.
Ethiopia on Monday stepped up evacuation warnings in low-lying areas as heavy rains threatened more of the flash floods that have already killed at least 600 people and affected tens of thousands around the country. Authorities said unusually heavy seasonal downpours in the highlands have raised water levels to a critical level at three dams.
Africa’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturer, Aspen Pharmacare on Monday reported a 235% increase in headline earnings per share from 185,5 cents to 144,7 cents for the year to the end of June. The group’s operating profit increased by 96% to R968-million — on the back of a 23% growth in revenue to R3,449-billion.
Saddam Hussein refused to enter a plea as he and six former army commanders went on trial in Baghdad on Monday on charges of killing tens of thousands of Kurdish villagers in a genocide campaign in 1988. The former president again challenged the legitimacy of the United States-sponsored special tribunal.
A United States teacher arrested in connection with the decade-old killing of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey arrived in Los Angeles from Thailand late on Sunday to undergo more questioning about his possible role in the 1996 murder. John Mark Karr (41) flew in business class on a Thai Airways flight that landed at Los Angeles International Airport at about 04.27am GMT on Monday.
Fifty-one people were killed on Monday when two trains travelling on the same track collided in northern Egypt in the country’s deadliest rail crash in four years. Two carriages were derailed in a tangle of torn metal as one train slammed into the back of another. Another 138 passengers were injured in the crash which also set one train ablaze.
Uganda’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) called on Monday for South Africa to play an unofficial role in peace talks after the government rejected an appeal for South African mediation. The LRA said it wanted members of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to participate.
Another two world records lit up the final night of the Pan Pacific Championships in Victoria, Canada on Sunday. But it was also a night in which Suzaan van Biljon bagged South Africa’s first gold medal of the competition. Michael Phelps was the first to break his own world mark, set in 2003, in the 200m individual medley after reaching the wall in 1:55,84.