Order has returned to the privately owned Kutama Sinthumule Correctional Centre in Makhado, Limpopo, a spokesperson said on Wednesday — this after a strike by prison officials led to the death of a 37-year-old inmate and the injury of another. The Department of Correctional Services and police were called in on Tuesday night.
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A holiday atmosphere took hold of strife-torn Khutsong early on Wednesday afternoon as residents opted for soccer instead of voting. However, Khutsong voters make up only a fraction of 1% of the country’s 21-million voters and should not be concentrated on to the detriment of the others, President Thabo Mbeki said.
A British Chinook helicopter, which has seen action in the Falklands War, Afghanistan and Iraq, was taken out of action after a head-on smash-up with a pigeon, the Royal Air Force said on Wednesday. The 10-tonne chopper was forced into an emergency landing.
Snake charmers have given the all clear for United States President George Bush to go ahead with plans to deliver a speech from a medieval fort in New Delhi during his three-day India visit, officials said on Wednesday. Police roped in the charmers over concerns that reptiles would gatecrash Bush’s scheduled address on Friday.
United States President George Bush on Wednesday made his first visit to Afghanistan and said he was confident that Osama Bin Laden would be brought to justice. Bush arrived this on Wednesday morning for a five-hour stop in Afghanistan ahead of his three-day visit to India, where thousands of protesters rallied before his arrival, shouting ”Death to Bush”.
At least 23 people were killed and 58 wounded on Wednesday in a car-bomb attack in Baghdad’s Jadida area, a mixed Shi’ite-Sunni neighbourhood in the south-east of the Iraqi capital, an interior ministry official said. Meanwhile, the trial of Saddam Hussein and seven aides on charges of crimes against humanity resumed on Wednesday.
The leader of the armed wing of the radical Islamic Jihad faction was killed on Wednesday in an Israeli air strike on a car in Gaza City, Palestinian medical sources said. Khaled al-Dahduh, the leader of the al-Quds Brigades in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, was killed when the vehicle in which he was travelling exploded.
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Voting got off to a good start despite a few problems, including flooding, at some voting stations, the Independent Electoral Commission said on Wednesday. By 9am, 99% of voting stations were open. Police used rubber bullets to disperse youths in Khutsong and extinguished burning tyres with a water cannon.
Innat Edson didn’t think it would end this way. Last year, she was making wedding plans. Now, at just 15, she is back at her mother’s cramped, dingy house, nursing a fussing baby her former fiancé refuses to acknowledge is his. Many of Malawi’s teen mothers marry much older men who they hope can give them a better life.
United States President George Bush arrived in Afghanistan on Wednesday for his first visit since US-led forces toppled the Taliban regime in 2001. Bush made the surprise stopover, landing at the US military base at Bagram, north of Kabul, as he headed to India to begin a maiden trip to South Asia