Authorities in the Congo have quarantined two north-western districts hit by the deadly Ebola virus to ensure the highly contagious disease does not spread, officials said on Friday. The two districts — Etoumbi, where eight deaths were recorded, and Mbomo, where a ninth person died — were sealed off on Wednesday.
The Kruger National Park (KNP) has fired four of its employees for beating to death and slaughtering at least six impala in February, a park spokesperson said on Friday. ”The intense cruelty of the incident horrified us,” KNP executive director Bandile Mkhize said in a statement on Friday.
World press chiefs are gathering in Nairobi, Kenya, for a conference next week amid growing criticism of Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki’s government for alleged deterioriation in media freedom. The Vienna-based International Press Institute kicks off its annual three-day general assembly in Nairobi on Sunday.
With the launch of the new search engine <a href="http://www.funnel.co.za" target="_blank" class="standardtext">Funnel</a>, South African internet users will be able to get faster, more accurate and more relevant results, as the engine only indexes South African sites, the Funnel team announced this week.
”The DA is alarmed at the allegations made in the M&G that the ANC funded its 2004 election campaign using millions of rands of taxpayers’ money.”
The ”racist tantrum” thrown by Deputy Minister of Minerals and Energy Lulu Xingwana in Parliament will hurt black South Africans as much as whites by discouraging investor confidence in the country, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said on Friday. He said it is necessary for all to raise their voices against what Xingwana said.
Commuters who suffer through the swelter of summer in the London Underground have been full of ideas about how to cool the trains, but none has managed to present a workable plan, the transport company said on Thursday. The London Underground had offered a £100 000 (R1,1-million) prize for the best plan.
The Ugandan army said on Friday it has killed a senior Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) commander who attended the first-ever direct talks with the government last year, throwing new doubts into halting peace efforts. Mediators and local leaders have been trying to lure the rebels back to peace talks amid a surge in brutal LRA violence.
A Czech truck driver who drove into a ditch was found to have 8g of alcohol in his bloodstream, just a month after he was stopped for drunk driving, authorities said on Thursday. "It is the same man we stopped on April 20 with 4,19g" per liter of blood, said the deputy chief of police in the northern town of Lomnice nad Popelkou.
The Cabinet will finalise the roll-out plan of the taxi-recapitalisation process by the end of next month — but the transport minister has promised that the much-delayed scrapping of currently ageing vehicles ”will commence this financial year”. He was speaking in his Budget vote in an extended public committee on Friday.