State leaders of countries in Asia and Africa gathered in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, on Saturday to discuss ways to strengthen cooperation between the two continents for the second and final day of the Asian-African Summit. The meeting is also a 50th commemoration of the first summit, called the Bandung Conference.
Zacarias Moussaoui, the man who investigators believe could have unravelled the al-Qaeda plot before the September 11 2001 attacks, pleaded guilty on Friday to terrorism and other charges carrying the death penalty. Moussaoui is the first al-Qaeda member to be convicted in a United States court since the attacks.
Media reports that underfunding of the South African Air Force (SAAF) has caused the service to run down are correct, SAAF chief Lieutenant General Carlo Gagiano said on Friday.
Failures in generators at power stations and a fault in a line connecting Zimbabwe with a power grid in the Democratic Republic of Congo were responsible for two days of nationwide electrical blackouts, officials told state radio on Friday. Many areas of the capital, Harare, were without power for 12 hours on Friday.
Politician Patricia de Lille said on Friday she was aware that the three women suing her had retracted their complaints about a clinical Aids trial in which they participated. However, she had ignored this, she told the Johannesburg High Court. She was responding to counsel Daniel Burger, appearing for the plaintiffs.
A German court on Friday ordered the retrial of a cannibal who killed and cooked a willing victim, saying his eight-and-a-half-year jail sentence for manslaughter was too lenient. Armin Meiwes admitted to the killing, but the trial judge sensationally ruled the two were simply ”psychologically sick people who found each other”.
A United States woman who claimed she found part of a human finger in her fast-food meal has been arrested, police said on Friday, as the digital mystery took a dramatic new turn. Anna Ayala (39) was arrested at her home in the desert gambling town of Las Vegas late on Thursday, officers said.
Western Cape local government minister Marius Fransman has instructed the mayor of the central Karoo District Council to suspend Beaufort West municipal manager Truman Prince immediately. Prince is facing charges of public violence, crimen injuria and assault following incidents in the past two weeks.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda have agreed to put an end to the presence of armed groups in the DRC that pose a threat to all of them, the DRC government said on Friday. Rwanda’s deputy minister of foreign affairs confirmed that there is a commitment ”to work in close collaboration”.
The Bush administration is considering forcing foreign airlines to check against government surveillance lists the names of all passengers on flights that go through United States airspace, officials revealed this week. About 500 foreign flights pass through US airspace every day.