The United Nations World Food Programme has decided to extend its emergency food-aid programme in Eritrea to mitigate the effects of drought, said Jean-Pierre Cebron, WFP’s country director for Eritrea. Cebron said the extension of WFP’s emergency activities was intended to provide food aid to around 840 000 people.
First it was the penal colony on Robben Island, then the Old Fort at Constitution Hill. Now a decaying army base on the edge of the Blyde River Canyon, in Mpumalanga, has become the latest set of buildings to be transformed from a place of oppression into a thriving tourism resort. Is tourism earning its reputation as the world’s peace industry by turning the architecture of terror into slick holiday resorts?
North Korea has halted operations at its nuclear reactor, prompting the fear that it may be extracting fuel rods for processing into weapons-grade plutonium. Less than a week after Pyongyang threatened to expand its atomic arsenal, the action seems to be designed to frighten the United States and regional powers into resuming talks.
Farmers and fishermen are devastating Iraq’s marshes, considered by some to be the site of the Garden of Eden, with uncontrolled use of chemicals and fishing using electric shocks, researchers warned on Monday. The illegal methods are wiping out wildlife, polluting water, endangering human health and undermining the recovery of one of the world’s great wetlands, they say.
South African Airways (SAA) said in a statement on Tuesday that it has begun randomly weighing its passengers together with their hand luggage through a voluntary process at Johannesburg International airport. A survey will be carried out on approximately 1Â 000 passengers travelling on SAA’s domestic, regional and international flights over the next two weeks.
An HIV/Aids housing policy launched by the Department of Housing in Pretoria on Tuesday is meant to assist those with the illness and the families and people around them affected by it. With 15% of the Gauteng population HIV-positive, the provincial housing department said it is critical to form a housing-sector response to HIV/Aids.
Black smoke from the roof of the Sistine Chapel signalled that Roman Catholic Church cardinals were still deadlocked on a choice of successor to Pope John Paul II after two rounds of voting early on Tuesday. An initial emission of black smoke from the chimney was followed 15 minutes later by a second one.
Minister of Social Development Zola Skweyiya expressed shock on Tuesday over allegations that substandard quality food hampers are being distributed in the Northern Cape. ”These allegations came as a shock and I have ordered the department to investigate with a sense of extreme urgency,” he said in a statement.
After numerous technical hitches and embarassing delays, the first of three pieces of the famed Axum obelisk is finally due to arrive home from Italy on Tuesday, Italian officials said. A plane carrying one-third of the huge, 160-tonne monument plundered by fascist Italy nearly 70 years ago is expected to land at the Axum airport at dawn on Tuesday.
A dinner date Romeo who took lonely Hong Kong women for expensive meals and fled before the bills arrived was on Tuesday beginning a two month jail sentence. Chow Wai-yip took the women for lavish dinners, then asked to use their cellphones to make a business call and fled shortly before the bill was due to arrive.