The United States has called on Nigeria deliver former Liberian leader Charles Taylor to a United Nations tribunal in Sierra Leone for trial on charges of crimes against humanity. With prospects clouded for Taylor’s prosecution for atrocities in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s, State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said, ”He needs to be brought to justice.”
A new study shows there is no justification for scientific whaling programmes under which thousands of the mammals have been killed in the name of research, Australia’s environment minister said on Tuesday. Ian Campbell said he would take the results of a 10-year research project in the oceans around Australia’s Antarctic Territory to the next International Whaling Commission meeting in June.
Harare city council plans to splash out Z,45-trillion to buy 329 sedans and pick-up trucks for its managers and field staff, Zimbabwe’s Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday. Its website said the purchase would be made with money the city intended borrowing from the open market.
James Butler, a boxer who fought under the nickname ”The Harlem Hammer,” pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and arson on Monday in the 2004 death of a freelance sports writer. Butler will be sentenced to 29 years and four months in prison by California state court Judge Michael Pastor on April 5, according to deputy public defender Jack Keenan.
Police were still in the dark on Tuesday about the culprits behind the weekend theft of foreign currency at the Johannesburg International airport. ”There are absolutely no developments,” spokesperson Senior Superintendent Vish Naidoo said on Tuesday morning.
Muslim worshippers are flocking to see a pair of fish in Liverpool which appear to bear the words "Allah" and "Muhammad", their owner said on Monday. Ali Al-Waqedi (23) who hailed the Oscar fish as a "message from God," said he had loaned them to a friend whose house was close to the local mosque so that worshippers could visit more easily.
Vietnam was set to host an international conference on Tuesday on the effects of the Vietnam War defoliant Agent Orange, bringing together veterans and delegates from at least six countries. Vietnamese civilians and soldiers from all sides of the conflict claim health defects from the chemical that United States forces used to strip away jungle cover and destroy food crops.
Myanmar’s increasingly reclusive and repressive military junta showed off its mysterious new capital, Naypyidaw, to outsiders on Monday for the first time, during a ceremony to mark Armed Forces Day. The country’s paramount leader, General Than Shwe, used his speech at the parade of 12 000 soldiers to announce that his much-promised transition to democracy would still take ”some time”.
The British-born shoe bomber, Richard Reid, had been part of an al-Qaeda plot to fly a fifth hijacked plane into the White House on September 11 2001, his self-confessed co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui told a Virginia court on Monday. The revelations on an additional al-Qaeda plot involving Reid were the most dramatic in a day of surprising and damaging testimony from Moussaoui.
Remember Pepsi-Cola’s attempt to re-enter South Africa 10 years ago? From booking its endorsement star Whitney Houston in a stadium where Coca-Cola owned marketing exclusivity to fielding rookie New Age Beverages against the formidable South African Breweries’ Amalgamated Beverage Industries, it was Pepsi’s bloodiest chapter in the history of the cola wars.