The Zimbabwe government has paid out Z-billion (,4-million) to 206 white farmers whose lands were seized under the land-reform programme, money which the farmers criticise as being too little, reports said on Friday. The total works out at an average of Z,1-billion ( 000) per farmer at the government’s official rate of exchange.
A 16-year-old initiate died in Libode on Friday, bringing to three the number of deaths from illegal circumcisions since the start of the initiation season last week, the Eastern Cape department of health said. ”He died in the bush at an illegal initiation school,” said spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo.
A London hospital that holds the copyright to Peter Pan has questioned the appropriateness of a series of books that portrays the character Wendy exploring her sexuality. The works, Lost Girls, by graphic novellist Alan Moore, are about three world-famous girl characters.
The survival of Brazil’s flagship airline Varig is on the line as a group of employees scramble to raise money for a first payment on the carrier, which faces liquidation if the money isn’t paid or another suitor doesn’t emerge. The workers’ group faces a Friday deadline to make the -million payment.
A daytime gun battle in the capital between Sunni insurgents and Shi’ite militiamen prompted the Iraqi government to tighten the Baghdad curfew on Friday as 22 people died in two bombings. The street fighting on Haifa Street on Baghdad’s west side broke out after militiamen loyal to Shi’ite radical leader Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army came under attack from Sunni Arab gunmen.
Pro-hunting campaigners lost their latest legal bid to overturn the ban on hunting with dogs in England and Wales on Friday. They had asked the Court of Appeal to rule that the ban infringed European Union trading and employment regulations and breached the European Convention on Human Rights.
A Swedish journalist was shot and killed on Friday in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, while attending a demonstration organised by Islamic courts, witnesses said. Unknown gunmen shot the journalist at a rally site in the southern part of the city where about 4Â 000 Islamists were demonstrating in support of the courts, they said.
The author of what has been described as the definitive dictionary of slang is gobsmacked, gutted, throwing up bunches, honked, hipped, and jacked like a cock-maggot in a sink-hole. A North Carolina school district has banned the dictionary under pressure from one of a growing number of conservative Christian groups using the internet to encourage school book bans across the United States.
Hypodermic needles have been designated as dangerous items — as opposed to prohibited articles — on passenger aircraft by the chief of civil aviation. This follows the alleged attempted hijacking of a local passenger airliner last weekend by a man who threatened the crew with a hypodermic syringe, demanding that the plane be diverted to Maputo.
Peace talks between the government of Burundi and the country’s last active rebel group resumed in Tanzania on Friday after a four-day interruption, a Tanzanian official said. Representatives of Bujumbura and the National Liberation Forces returned to the table in the Tanzanian commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, in a bid to meet a July 2 deadline, the official said.