A United States-led coalition warplane mistakenly dropped a bomb on an Afghan police convoy in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing 12 police officers, a police commander said. The coalition confirmed "an event did happen" and said it was collecting details.
Police at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport on Thursday released a warning for hallucinogenic dark chocolate bars after a homeless man ate one and confused their uniforms with wedding dresses. "He ate some and we found him hallucinating", mixing up police uniforms with wedding dresses, police spokesperson Rob Stenacker said.
Israel’s action in the Middle East has triggered "unprecedented anti-Americanism" and restiveness on the streets, South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said on Thursday. Noting that the international community now needs to resolve the situation, he said: "I want to warn that the potential for increased terrorism is greater today than it has ever been."
The Choice on the Termination of Pregnancy (CTOP) Amendment Act and the Traditional Health Practitioners Act were declared invalid by the Constitutional Court on Thursday. A challenge was brought last year by Doctors for Life International to the validity of four health-related Acts. The CTOP Amendment Act allows for nurses to perform abortions.
South Africa’s cricketers have struck back at suggestions made in Sri Lanka that senior players bullied lower-profile colleagues into agreeing to abandon the tour on security grounds. Local newspapers lambasted the tourists on Thursday in a series of articles, which called captain Mark Boucher and his team ”chickens”.
Pre-HIV test counselling may be a luxury South Africa can no longer afford given the scale of the pandemic, according to Judge Edwin Cameron. Cameron, himself HIV positive, said in an article in the latest newsletter of the South African HIV Clinicians’ Society that Aids is now a medically manageable disease, and no longer a necessarily fatal condition.
About sixty people were missing and 13 others injured after southern Ecuador’s Tungurahua volcano erupted violently early on Thursday, unleashing its highest level of activity since 1999, a local official said. ”There are approximately 60 people missing in the highest-risk area and six others wounded in Penipe,” Penipe mayor Juan Salazar told Ecuavisa television.
The Land Claims Commission is refusing to allow voluntary sellers of land to appoint their own conveyancers, thus delaying the finalising of land claims, organised agriculture said on Thursday. ”In some cases documents were already at the deeds office … when the commission … withdrew the documents,” said Annelize Crosby, spokesperson for AgriSA.
The South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) has accused a division of South African Airways of racism and non-compliance with employment-equity laws. ”SAA Technical remains lily white at the top and pitch black at the bottom,” Satawu spokesperson Ronnie Mamba said on Thursday.
A South African Express Airways plane en route to Richards Bay from Johannesburg was diverted to Durban on Thursday morning due to a security alert, the carrier said. Sniffer dogs and the South African Police Service searched the plane and its passengers’ luggage after the aircraft landed at Durban International airport.