Up to 20 000 Africans are trying to reach Europe from camps in Western Sahara and Mauritania, the governor of Spain’s Canary Islands said on Wednesday. Citing a Spanish police report, Jose Segura told AFP: ”After an evaluation, there are maybe 15 000 or 20 000; it’s very difficult to put a precise figure on it.”
Former United States president Bill Clinton this week said he supports mandatory HIV testing in countries with high prevalence, provided people are willing to participate in the testing programmes and that the country can provide access to anti-retroviral drugs and ensure HIV-positive residents would not experience discrimination.
In two seemingly unrelated events, the east of Zimbabwe was rocked recently — first by a violent earthquake and then by the election of Manicaland local hero Arthur Mutambara as the president of the pro-Senate faction of the Movement for Democratic Change.
Gordon Parks, who captured the struggles and triumphs of black America as a photographer for Life magazine and then became Hollywood’s first major black director with The Learning Tree and the hit Shaft, has died, his family said. He was 93.
Hidden from the world, deep in the endless ruins of the Chechen capital Grozny, a young man smiles at his mother through a cage door. She holds the key, but Iriskhan’s true jailer is the madness he has suffered since the war in his homeland began just over a decade ago. Iriskhan was 18, when Russian troops first laid siege to Grozny, his mother Raisa says.
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Concert pianist Lily Dumont Mindus, who performed around the world after fleeing Nazi Germany, has died. She was 94. Mindus — who died at her home on Monday — performed as a soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra by the time she was 15.
The Bush administration is getting closer to a United Nations Security Council rebuke of Iran, but the latest round of diplomacy shows the United States needs the help of Cold War foe Russia to close the deal. Iran is offering to suspend full-scale uranium enrichment for up to two years, a diplomat said on Tuesday.
The SA Army has unveiled a vision for the next 15 years that will require major changes in the way it thinks and fights. The chief of the army, Lieutenant-General Solly Shoke, said in Pretoria on Tuesday that his Vision 2020 would determine the future direction of the army and also influence what equipment it would buy.
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The woman Jacob Zuma allegedly raped told the Johannesburg High Court on Tuesday she had been raped on a previous occasion. She said this while giving evidence on the contents of an SMS sent to her sister after the alleged incident involving Zuma.