Madagascar’s Parliament on Monday sacked Speaker Jean Lahiniriko for misconduct after he spoke approvingly of Iran’s controversial nuclear programme during a visit to Tehran, officials said. The motion was submitted by the ruling TIM party of which the speaker had been a member until being expelled last week.
Aid workers and United Nations peacekeepers are trading food and other goods for sex with children in camps housing Liberians uprooted by fighting during the West African nation’s war, an international charity says. Save the Children says the situation for children has not improved since the 1998-2002 civil war ended.
Resettled farmers in Zimbabwe have been warned that the government will repossess farms that are not being fully utilised, Harare’s Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday. Its website quoted Mashonaland East provincial Governor Ray Kaukonde as saying: ”We will not hesitate to remove [such] farmers.”
In a remote corner of southern Rwanda, Twa pygmies are fighting a losing battle against the modern realities of environmentalism that are robbing them of their traditions. They have been forced to abandon their centuries-old hunter-gatherer lifestyle by a ban on such activity in the dense Nyungwe rainforest.
Rival militias battled using rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, artillery and assault rifles for control of a part of the Somali capital for a third straight day on Tuesday, killing at least nine people and wounding 27 others overnight. The clashes marked an escalation among combatants who usually do not fight after dusk.
The Black Brokers Forum, the largest representative body of black financial-services providers in South Africa, will be hosting its first conference to address the numerous issues affecting black professionals and consumers in the local financial-services industry.
Iran’s press on Tuesday hailed the hard-line regime’s letter to arch-enemy George Bush — with moderate papers hoping for detente and hardliners praising President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s "audacity". "Regardless of the content … such a communication could lead the two sides to direct talks," the centrist <i>Shargh</i> newspaper said somewhat optimistically.
South Africa’s market for internet access services will continue to grow steadily, according to information and communications technology market analysts BMI-TechKnowledge’s (BMI-T) latest research. It released the South African internet services market report for 2006 on Tuesday.
Zimbabwe state bureaucrats on Monday said unemployment in the country stood at a comfortable 9% as late as 2004, according to the latest <i>Labour Force Survey</i>, totally rejecting independent estimates that joblessness surpassed the 50% mark several years ago and is at present anything above 70%.
Arsenal teenager Theo Walcott made England’s provisional World Cup squad on Monday even though he has never played in a Premier League game. Coach Sven-Goran Eriksson also included injured stars Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen in the 27-man roster, as well as several other players who’ve barely kicked a ball in the last few months.