A white security expert arrested more than two weeks ago over a stash of weapons found at his home in eastern Zimbabwe has been denied bail, local reports said on Friday. ”The High Court yesterday [Thursday] denied a bail application by ex-Rhodesian soldier Peter Michael Hitschmann,” the radio said.
South African explorer Mike Horn and his Norwegian colleague Borge Ousland have reached the North Pole after a 60-day crossing that is said to be the first-ever accomplished during the polar night, their website announced on Friday. The explorers said they had reached the North Pole at 4pm GMT on Thursday.
More than 100 people, most of them wearing the purple T-shirts of the One in Nine campaign, gathered outside the Cape High Court on Friday to protest against the treatment of rape victims. Organiser Johanna Kehler, of the Aids Legal Network, said similar protests were being held at high courts in other centres.
An increase of between 10% and 20% in milk prices for Free State farmers is needed for them to stay in business, the local milk producers’ organisation said on Friday. ”There is great anxiety among Free State milk farmers about the ever-increasing input costs,” chairperson Koos Pienaar said.
Jostling over governance in the Cape Town metro continued on Friday with no apparent solution imminent. The Democratic Alliance’s tenuous hold on power in the city is being threatened by the Independent Democrats’ determination to pursue its quest for changing the executive mayor system to an executive committee system.
Drive-by shootings, roadside bombings and sectarian killings left 28 dead in Iraq on Friday. American and Iraqi troops swept the oil-rich region of Kirkuk for suspected insurgents and captured dozens. A bombing outside a Sunni Muslim mosque after Friday prayers killed at least four worshippers and wounded 15.
African National Congress attempts to wrest power from a Democratic Alliance-led coalition in Cape Town bode ill for the country’s political future, DA leader Tony Leon said on Friday. ”The ANC’s behaviour raises serious and troubling questions about how that party will behave when its national majority cracks — as eventually it must,” he said in his weekly online letter.
Five people were injured when police fired rubber bullets at protesting security guards in two incidents in central Johannesburg on Friday. A police officer on the scene said they had to fire the rubber bullets after protesters hit passers-by and cars with sticks on the corner of Fox and Sauer streets. Six people were arrested.
Russian-speaking pilots sat coolly behind locked cockpit doors, unaware of the failed air conditioning in the passenger-packed cabin of their geriatric aircraft as it sat on a sun-baked African runway. Weasua Air Transport, the Liberian operator of that jet-prop aircraft, was among 92 airlines banned on Wednesday from European airspace due to safety concerns.
The British hostage, Norman Kember, and his two Canadian colleagues were free on Thursday night after a rescue mission led by the SAS into one of the most dangerous parts of Baghdad. The troops found the three tied up but unharmed. No shots were fired.