Five people have drowned and hundreds been displaced in northern Ethiopia since midweek after swollen rivers burst their banks, officials said on Friday. The flooding, which started on Wednesday, comes less than a week after flash floods killed 254 in an eastern township of the country.
Nearly 1Â 000 striking Shoprite workers marched down Durban’s West Street on Friday morning amid a heavy police presence. The workers were due to hand over a memorandum to the KwaZulu-Natal regional managing director of Shoprite at its flagship store in West Street. The Shoprite store in West Street was closed for business.
Angola’s Parliament has approved an amnesty plan for separatists in Cabinda as part of a deal to end a simmering 31-year conflict in the oil-rich province, media reported. The Angolan government and a faction of the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda signed a peace deal earlier this month.
Zimbabwe’s central bank chief urged a collective fight against the ”inflation dragon” on Friday, saying it still posed a major threat to the economy despite falling to just under 1Â 000% recently. ”The successive modest decline in annual inflation over the months for June and July is a welcome development,” Gideon Gono said in a statement.
Election workers facing high logistical hurdles counted just over two million votes in the first 11 days since The Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) historic vote, according to the Independent Electoral Commission. President Joseph Kabila held the lead in the presidential race, but the numbers were far from definitive, with only about 10% of ballots counted.
Percy Zvomuya reflects on two new books about Zimbabwe’s history.
The Charity Shield was once a rousing curtain-raiser to a long winter in the mud. These days, rechristened the Community Shield for tax and fraud purposes, we head for the traditional clash between the league champions and FA Cup winners, with Liverpool having already played in Europe — and with winter and mud just a distant memory after the driest, hottest British summer ever.
Even before the news that Alan Shearer is to continue as a pundit on the BBC, this month has not been a good one for sport. Positive drug test has followed positive drug test. The cases of Floyd Landis and Justin Gatlin, following the investigation into Barry Bonds and the banning of Tim Montgomery and Kelli White, have led a lot of people to ask, ”Are all these Americans on drugs?”
A group of Iraqi and English boys show their elders how to make peace. Clissold Park, Hackney, isn’t the obvious setting for an international peace conference. But here on an improvised football pitch, kids from England and Iraq are learning to live with each other.
A narrow loss in the second Test went some way to redeeming the Proteas’ reputation, writes Tom Eaton. In his wrap of the extraordinary second Test at Colombo this week, an online correspondent was inspired to declare that the match could not have been ”more tense, dramatic and gripping if it was scripted by Stephen King”.