Ethiopians voted by the millions, responding enthusiastically to a open parliamentary race between the coalition that ended a brutal dictatorship and an opposition promising greater liberalisation. But on Monday, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi declared a ban on demonstrations and open meetings in Addis Ababa.
Ethiopia’s opposition on Monday backed off a threat to reject nationwide results from hotly contested weekend elections it says were marred by fraud, saying their complaints were limited to key areas. The boycott threat led Prime Minister Meles Zenawi late on Sunday to ban all post-election demonstrations for one month.
The news on the radio was very confusing. The Supreme Court in Bloemfontein, it announced, had rejected a claim for compensation against the minister of safety and security made by a woman who had been raped by three uniformed policemen one dark night in 1999.
The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union has turned its back on an opportunity to benefit from being involved in a consortium that bought 6,7% of Telkom, the Sunday Times reported. The Democratic Alliance welcomed the move, saying doing otherwise would have lent legitimacy to the enrichment of African National Congress presidential spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama.
Until last summer, Nguyen Thi Hanh used to watch flocks of ducks waddle across the road outside her house, holding up cars as they wandered about a tranquil village in which almost every family earned a major share of their income by raising fowl. Since an nearby outbreak of bird flu, however, the ducks have been slaughtered.
Newsweek magazine on Sunday admitted it had got its facts wrong on a story alleging that American military interrogators had desecrated copies of the Qur’an, after a week of protests about the article left at least 17 people dead and more than 100 injured. The report last week sparked protests across the Islamic world.
The British government clashed openly with Uzbekistan on Sunday over the violent suppression of a protest in the former Soviet republic that the British Foreign Office said had left hundreds dead. Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, said on Sunday there had been a ”clear abuse of human rights”.
Not content with winning the recent Car of the Year competition with its S40, Volvo SA has added another couple of strings to its bow in the form of the V40 2,0 turbo diesel sedan and the S50 station wagon with the same engine. The 2,0 diesel models are probably among the most refined versions on the market in that capacity.
There’s that addictive pop-pop-pop as you lift your foot off the loud pedal and the engine goes into over-run. There’s no waste gate to speak of, and that excess pressure created by the now very refined supercharger has only one place to go through one of the four, 399,5cc capacity cylinders. The Minni Cooper S has undergone some changes and motorists are unlikely to realise that under that familiar body, there’s a whole new beast.
Regulatory authorities are to hold a public hearing into an application by Cell C to reduce its empowerment shareholding. CellSaf, the empowerment consortium that owns 40% of the country’s smallest cellphone network operator, wants to sell a tranche of shares amounting to 15% of Cell C to Lanun, a Saudi investment firm, for about $180-million.