The European Union’s foreign and security policy chief, Javier Solana, on Wednesday promised strong support for the creation of an independent state of Palestine, saying the 25-nation bloc is determined to help Palestinians build up the structures of a viable and separate state.
The National Association of Conservancies of South Africa is selling advertising on highways to help pay for clear-up operations to remove alien plants, the organisation said on Wednesday. The ”adopt a highway” project is run in much the same way as ”adopt an animal” programmes in zoos, said project coordinator Dave Peters.
World number one tennis player Roger Federer toured Port Elizabeth on Wednesday, visiting the Imbewu Community Volunteers, which he sponsors. This was the Swiss-based player’s first opportunity to meet the organisation’s workers, and many of the children he has sponsored for the past year.
About 3 000 truck drivers gathered at the Johannesburg offices of the trucking industry’s bargaining council on Wednesday in a protest for better pay. Congress of South African Trade Unions president Willie Madisha addressed the crowd before they marched to Beyers Naude Square.
Africa remains the world’s weak spot in the fight against drugs because most countries on the continent lack the means to combat trafficking, the International Narcotics Control Board has warned. It said while cannabis remains ”a major issue of concern” throughout Africa, the trade in cocaine and heroin was also on the rise.
Zimbabwe will introduce a new currency next year, phasing out bank notes introduced two years ago as a stop-gap measure to ease critical cash shortages across the country, a government daily reported on Wednesday. ”Production is at full throttle as we speak,” the state-owned Herald newspaper quoted a central bank official saying.
”Whenever someone talks about bringing better technology to Africa I can’t help thinking to myself that you can’t eat bandwidth, and that you can’t use the internet to filter water. I am not suggesting communication infrastructure is unimportant for development, which would be foolish. My criticism of this process is the mood and style of it all,” writes Vincent Maher.
A woman has filed a lawsuit against the United States city of Norwalk for exposure to her colleagues’ perfumes and colognes, alleging officials have failed to lessen her exposure to such scents in the town clerk’s office and that she is being harrassed. She is also seeking an unspecified amount of monetary damages and attorney’s fees.
The Cursing Stone of Carlisle was intended simply as an innocent community art project, harking back to the British city’s colourful past. But following floods, disease and a string of other local misfortunes, town elders are considering whether the £10 000 (R110 000) art work should be removed and destroyed, a report said on Wednesday.
An Iranian woman is trying to set a legal precedent by divorcing her husband because he has not showered for more than a year, a press report said on Wednesday. The 36-year-old woman, only identified as Mina, reportedly told a Tehran court that her husband, Reza, smells so bad that even his children will not go near him.