The Ethiopian Human Rights Council said on Tuesday that police had arrested two of its investigators probing alleged abuses by authorities during a police crackdown on post-election violence. The arrests took place shortly after more than 3Â 000 opposition members had been rounded up by police.
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President Thabo Mbeki’s sacking on Tuesday of his deputy, Jacob Zuma, has been widely lauded but also criticised, while Zuma himself has accepted his fate.
Four white Waterkloof youths are spending the lunch hour behind bars after being convicted in the Pretoria Regional Court on Tuesday of murdering a black man and assaulting another in December 2001. They face a minimum sentence of life imprisonment for committing a murder with common purpose.
More than a million Americans were infected with HIV/Aids at the end of 2003, with black, homosexual and bisexual men making up the largest group among them, says a government statistics report made public on Monday. African-Americans made up about 47% of this group, whites 34%, and Hispanics 17%.
A 14-year-old boy has died after apparently being asphyxiated by fumes from a brazier at an initiation school in Port Elizabeth, the Eastern Cape health department said on Tuesday. The police have opened an inquest docket, and a post-mortem will be conducted to establish the exact cause of his death.
The trial of a reputed Ku Klux Klansman accused of the 1964 murder of three young civil rights workers in Mississippi began on Monday with potential jurors bussed past barricades to the the Neshoba County courthouse. The defendant, 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen, looked straight ahead and said nothing as he was taken by wheelchair into the red-brick courthouse.
A raucous welcome greeted Michael Jackson as he returned to his Neverland Ranch after being acquitted on all counts in his child molestation trial — a victory that triggered jubilation among the pop star’s fans and embarrassment for the district attorney’s office. ”All of us here and millions around the world love and support you,” proclaimed a banner.
Fifa is to consider using an electronic microchip in balls at the 2006 World Cup finals if experiments prove successful, Fifa president Sepp Blatter said on Monday.
The microchip, which is supposed to confirm whether or not a ball has crossed the goal line, is being tested at the under-17 world championship in Peru later this year.
Turkey was being set up as the main casualty of French and Dutch rejection of the European Union Constitution on Monday night when France seemed to put the brakes on Ankara’s 40-year dream of joining the union. However Britain is determined to press ahead with accession talks on October 3.
Some of the women sat at a wooden table littered with documents. Others hovered near a computer learning how to write a press release, or traded gossip over weak tea. It could almost be a PTA meeting or a ladies’ social circle — but for the tragedy that haunts this room. All of these women lost relatives in last September’s Beslan school massacre.