Fifty years after 20 000 women marched on Pretoria to protest against the pass laws, women are marching again. Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of the women’s march on the Union Buildings to protest against the extension of pass laws to black women. Thousands of people gathered at Strijdom Square on Wednesday morning.
In its glory days, the aluminum-and-steel hulk that sits outside the Alabama space museum was a training ground for astronauts who flew in the United States’s first space station. Today, the full-size training mock-up of Skylab is slowly rotting away after spending years on display at the US Space and Rocket Centre.
Painter Andree Ruellan, who painted some of her most memorable work from visits to the southern United States during the Depression era, has died in Kingston. She was 101. A friend, Daniel Gelfand, confirmed that Ruellan died on July 15. She lived for many years in Shady, New York, near Woodstock.
Louise Simone Bennett-Coverly, a Jamaican poet and folklorist who popularised her country’s culture before its independence from Britain, died on July 27. She was 86. Known in her native Caribbean country as ”Miss Lou”, Bennett-Coverly advocated the teaching of Jamaican culture.
Fantasy author David Gemmell, known for his adventure tales revolving around heroism and leadership, died on July 28, his publisher said. He was 57. Gemmell had quadruple heart bypass surgery two weeks before, and died in the hospital according to his publisher, Transworld Publishers.
Zimbabwe is this week expected to seal a -million deal with Russia for the supply of five Ilyushin and Tupolev commercial airplanes as President Robert Mugabe’s government steps up efforts to strengthen economic ties with East European and Asian countries, sources told independent news service ZimOnline.
The Chinese — who lay claim to inventing paper — were using it 100 years earlier than previously thought, state press said on Wednesday following a new discovery of an ancient scrap of the material. The 10-square-centimetre piece of paper was found in north-west China’s Gansu province and is believed to have been made in eight BC.
The flood situation in four states of India remained grim on Wednesday with almost 860 000 people displaced, officials said, as the death toll from the latest lashing monsoon rains rose to 196. Southern Andhra Pradesh state remained the worst hit with 543 000 people displaced by flood waters.
Netball has been plunged into crisis following the resignation of two members of Netball South Africa’s national executive and the national coach. All three resignations are with immediate effect. The resignations followed a meeting of the national council at which all 34 netball regions were represented.
Hundreds of New Zealand motorists who claimed their vehicles were hearses so they could pay reduced registration fees face prosecution. The scam came to light last month when a woman claimed on talk-back radio that she and her friends registered their vehicles as hearses because they carried frozen chickens home from the supermarket.