Conflict between North West Premier Edna Molewa and senior cabinet members over alleged corruption in the provincial government has been highlighted in confidential documents leaked to the Mail & Guardian. In one she questions former minister of agriculture Ndleleni Duma’s authorisation of a corruption investigation into the North West’s crisis-ridden agriculture department.
With every rasping breath Priscilla Govender takes the pain is visible on her face. The air clanks in her lungs as it struggles to move through the mucus in her respiratory system and she can barely speak. For a 47-year-old, she is frail, looking and moving like someone almost twice her age.
Israeli air strikes killed 14 civilians in Lebanon and Hezbollah battled Israeli ground troops on Monday as the United Nations Security Council failed to agree on a draft resolution seeking to end 27 days of fighting. Opposition from Lebanon caused the United States and France to delay a vote on the resolution also aimed at setting terms to settle the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
The death toll from flash floods in eastern Ethiopia has risen to at least 190, with 39 children among the victims, an official said on Monday. Floods tore through the eastern town of Dire Dawa early on Sunday, and as many as 10 000 people have been displaced in and around the town.
Work on three of South Africa’s new stadiums for the 2010 soccer World Cup can be completed in three years, though such a tight timetable would not have been feasible in bureaucratic Germany, says a German architect involved in the project. ”By 1999, we were already planning for the Olympic Stadium. That’s seven years before the event took place,” he told journalists in Berlin.
Stressed-out Chinese can now unleash pent-up anger at a bar that lets customers attack staff, smash glasses and generally make a ruckus, a Chinese newspaper reported on Monday. The Rising Sun Anger Release Bar in Nanjing, capital of the eastern province of Jiangsu, employs 20 muscled young men as ”models” for customers to punch and scream at.
Poachers have killed at least nine rare black rhinos in a conservation area in central Zimbabwe, the state-controlled Herald newspaper reported on Monday. Poaching is said to be on the increase in cash-strapped Zimbabwe where wildlife officials battle with ever-dwindling resources that stop them from effectively safeguarding rare game.
Madonna staged a mock-crucifixion in the Italian capital on Sunday, ignoring a storm of protest and accusations of blasphemy from the Roman Catholic Church. In a sold-out stadium just over a kilometre from Vatican City, the lapsed-Catholic diva wore a fake crown of thorns as she was raised on a glittery cross during the Rome stop of her worldwide ”Confessions Tour”.
A week after surgery forced him to put his brother in charge of the island he has dominated for 47 years, Cuban leader Fidel Castro remained out of sight and out of power, but was said to be on the road to recovery. Cuban officials and Latin American allies said the 79-year-old former guerrilla fighter was recuperating from gastric surgery but faced weeks of convalescence.
Iran warned Britain and the United States on Sunday that the international community could face a new oil crisis if the United Nations Security Council imposes sanctions on Tehran over its alleged attempt to acquire a nuclear weapons-making capability.