Pilots at South African Airways (SAA) have postponed their attempt to go on strike after talks with management took a positive turn, the SAA Pilots’ Association (Saapa) said on Monday. ”The discussions … have resulted in important progress being made,” said Saapa chairperson Captain Piet Taljaard.
Zimbabwean officials on Monday began a week of crunch talks with a delegation from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is weighing whether to expel the Southern African country from its ranks.
A seemingly endless cycle of extreme violence in lawless Somalia is having a ”catastrophic” effect on the war-shattered nation’s civilian population, the international charity Médécins sans Frontières (MSF) said on Monday. ”The frightening fact is that Somalia is officially not even at war,” MSF said.
The Department of Labour has called on employers to make workplaces safe after a second person died of injuries from an accident at Samancor’s Middelburg Ferrochrome furnace last week. Jaji Jan Mtsweni was one of 13 people injured when ”hot gases were released” at one of the furnaces last Wednesday morning.
A mysterious patient at a British hospital who did not speak to doctors and nurses for months but loved to play the piano has been discharged, health officials said on Monday. A spokesperson for the West Kent National Health Service said the condition of the patient dubbed ”Piano Man” had shown a ”marked improvement” and he no longer needed medical treatment.
NOT THE MOVIE OF THE WEEK: Between the moments of violence and the over-played caricatures there is the occasional laugh in Adam Sandler’s new movie The Longest Yard, writes Shaun de Waal.
A granny in Norway who scattered birdfeed in a flowerbed outside her retirement home unknowingly fed them cannabis seeds — and ended up with the wrong kind of pot in her garden, daily <i>Drangedalsposten</i> reported on Thursday. "It was my grandchildren who noticed it," she said.
Mauritania’s ousted leader Maaouiya Ould Taya arrived on Monday in Qatar, which has reportedly granted him asylum after he was toppled in a bloodless coup almost three weeks ago. ”The delegation arrived in Doha at 8am,” said Mohamad Ould Ali, the private teacher of the exiled leader, adding that he was in ”high spirits”.
Civil aviation authorities were on Monday investigating Sunday’s plane crash in Durban in which a light aircraft carrying five Austrian tourists and a pilot nose-dived into the roof of a house. The pilot, Alistair Freeman, suffered a broken leg, lacerations and bruising. He is in a stable condition in the St Augustine’s hospital in Durban.
A 73-year-old former New Zealand soldier is to undergo a sex change and the government has agreed to pick up the 30 000 New Zealand dollar (R136 200) cost of the operation, a report said on Saturday. After the operation, transsexual Vicki Harvey will be able to change the gender on her birth certificate to "female".