Somalia’s transitional leaders met in Nairobi on Friday in a bid to restore order to a heated parliamentary debate over a controversial peacekeeping mission to their anarchic country that degenerated into a bloody brawl. A spokesperson said President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed had called for political dialogue and harmony.
More than half of all Ethiopian children are stunted, according to a government report on the state of the country’s health released on Thursday. One in 10 children are described as ”wasted”, and just under half as underweight due to poor diet and malnutrition, said the report issued by Ethiopia’s health ministry.
The Israeli nuclear whistleblower, Mordechai Vanunu, is facing another term in prison after he was charged on Thursday with breaching a gag order imposed on his release from an 18-year sentence last April. Israeli prosecutors laid 22 charges against Vanunu at a Jerusalem magistrate’s court for allegedly exposing nuclear secrets in interviews with the foreign press.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/199502/Zim_icon.GIF" align=left>The Independent Democrats has withdrawn from the multiparty South African parliamentary observer mission to monitor the March 31 election in Zimbabwe. In a statement released by MP Vincent Gore, ID member of the team, he said his party believes the "entire observer mission is a farce and a waste of taxpayers’ money".
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Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court has thrown out a plea by a group representing more than three million expatriates demanding the right to vote in the March 31 parliamentary elections, a state-run daily reported on Friday. There are an estimated 3,5-million Zimbabweans living abroad.
Sexuality is about creativity and self-expression, and alternative sexualities should be celebrated, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on Thursday. ”You should love who you are,” Tutu said in a film-clip message at the opening of the yearly Out in Africa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Rosebank, Johannesburg.
Four air-crew members have survived a South African Air Force helicopter crash outside the Bergview Engen One-Stop in Harrismith on Friday morning, emergency services said. The helicopter crashed about 100m from the complex. ”One blade hit a car on the freeway and spun into the complex where there were about 60 kids in the playground,” a witness said.
Work remained suspended on Friday at DRDGold’s North West Operations’ number-two shaft on Friday, a company spokesperson said. Operations were stopped after an earth tremor earlier this week. Last week, two people died at the company’s Stilfontein mine after an earthquake measuring 5,3 on the Richter scale.
Eight people were injured when they jumped from a moving train to flee the current from an electricity cable that fell on to a carriage in Germiston on Friday. Emergency services spokesperson Johan van der Heever said the cable made contact with the body of the train after a malfunction in the overhead system.
Economic statistics surveys released by Statistics South Africa will now include two million more businesses, the organisation said on Friday. ”Our economic surveys will now include two million more businesses which are registered as tax income units,” Stats SA head Pali Lehohla told reporters in Pretoria.