Buoyed by early returns suggesting significant gains in the capital, Ethiopia’s opposition on Monday backed off a threat to reject nationwide results from hotly contested weekend elections. As vote counts trickled in, observers said Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s ruling party appears to have lost parliamentary seats.
A body of African municipal structures was launched in Pretoria on Monday with calls for a renewed focus at the lowest level of government on improving the lives of indigent Africans. African Union chairperson Olusegun Obasanjo said he hopes the congress marks the beginning of strong local governance structures.
Sporadic shooting continued on Monday in an eastern Uzbek city where an uprising sparked a crackdown by security forces that left up to 500 people dead, and a human rights group reported that clashes in another town killed an additional 200. The government has denied opening fire on demonstrators.
Mortar barrages, roadside bombings and drive-by shootings killed 10 Iraqis, officials said on Monday, and Iraq’s new government vowed to track down the killers of more than 40 people found slain in the past 48 hours. Batches of bodies, many blindfolded and bound, were found in various locations over the weekend.
San Jose police said on Friday they have traced a human finger that a woman claimed to have found in a bowl of Wendy’s fast-food chilli to a friend of the woman’s husband. Anna Ayala was arrested last month after police came to suspect that she had planted the offending digit herself.
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) President Joseph Kabila was joined on Monday in Parliament by his South African counterpart, Thabo Mbeki, for an official ceremony to pass a post-war DRC Constitution. The full Parliament’s adoption of the new Constitution is a major symbolic step in giving the DRC a new basis for democratic rule.
About 11 000 people turned out on Friday to feast on an attempt by 250 chefs and culinary students to set a new record for making and eating the region’s renowned nutty spiced chocolate garnish, known as <i>mole</i>. The chefs spent days preparing the famed Puebla sauce, a traditional Mexican food.
Hundreds of posters advertising the upcoming final instalment of the <i>Star Wars</i> film saga have been stolen from bus stops across Mexico City, 20th Century Fox officials said. The posters are made with a glow-in-the-dark material and cost about $6 (R38) each to make.
”You get respect with this,” says Gennadi Lazuein, an aviation millionaire, as I drive his Kombat armoured tank-ette along the roads of St Petersburg. As frightened faces stare at me and our looming vehicle from their greying, battered Ladas, I see what he means. The Kombat T-98 closely resembles a large security van with lots of extra shiny knobs and lights.
A British hospital has asked for help from the public in determining the identity of a distressed man who has been unable to utter a word since being found on a beach more than a month ago and who has turned out to be a piano virtuoso. The man was found soaking wet on the beach, dressed in a smart black suit and tie.