They are the new pioneers, echoing their 19th-century forebears by flocking to the prairies on the promise of free land and new opportunity. Small American towns are desperate to fight off decades of decline and depopulation. Now many have made a last-ditch promise to attract settlers: go there, build a home and the land will be free.
Major increases in the price of the staple diet of bread and maize meal went into effect on Saturday in Harare, but the Zimbabwean capital was reported quiet after a weeklong blitz on street traders and shack dwellers that saw ten of thousands arrested or left homeless in the midwinter cold.
The disciplinary hearing of disgraced Beaufort West politician Truman Prince will resume on Sunday morning when the African National Congress will call its last two witnesses to testify. The hearing arises from a documentary on SABC3 on child prostitution that showed Prince flirting with under-age girls.
A Volkswagen Beetle-driving pensioner was arrested on Saturday for allegedly pulling out his gun and shooting a fellow motorist in the leg in an attack of road rage in Bruma Lake, Johannesburg, police said. The 64-year-old man said he was overtaken by a Jetta that pulled in front of him, let him pass and then cut him off again.
On the day of Lebanon’s first election since the departure of Syria’s occupying army, Christians are bitter, frightened and divided over what they say has been their ”betrayal” by both the Cedar Revolution — which sprang up earlier this year — and by their own leadership at the moment of the country’s ”liberation”.
Prop Dave Hewett scored a valedictory try as the Canterbury Crusaders beat the New South Wales Waratahs 35-12 on Saturday to end a decade of Super 12 rugby with their fifth championship. The Crusaders led 35-6 after 64 minutes and seemed likely to make their fifth championship win their most emphatic.
A group of protesters sang, danced and chanted anti-Barclays slogans in Johannesburg on Saturday morning against the British bank’s takeover of Absa. The protesters, from the Jubilee South Africa group, wore anti-privatisation T-shirts and carried banners with slogans such as ”Barclays economic terrorists”.
Another person died of Ebola in the north-western Congo, raising the number of victims to 10, health officials announced on Friday. The latest victim died on Thursday in Etoumbi district after being in contact with her husband, who succumbed to the haemorrhagic fever on May 11.
Car owners around town in Sullivan, New York, are covering their mirrors in an attempt to outsmart a woodpecker who apparently thinks his reflection is an enemy. Tim Taylor, who owns Thruway Auto Glass, said he replaced 30 smashed mirrors last year and 18 this year because of the bird.
Michael Jackson’s defence suddenly rested their case without calling any rebuttal witnesses on Friday after prosecutors in a final move showed the jury a videotape of the accuser telling investigators for the first time in 2003 that he was molested by the pop star. The tape offered little that the boy had not already testified to on the stand.