Almost every woman I know is pregnant or planning. Either high on post-conception, heavy with foetus in utero, panicked for the Caesarean section booked for Monday or relentlessly copulating every time there is suspected ovulation. It is as if somebody has rewired the big picture and it has frozen on the birth channel.
The chief of an eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) militia group has been arrested in connection with last week’s killing of nine United Nations peacekeepers, a source close to the DRC presidency said on Tuesday. Meanwhile, aid agencies operating in northern Ituri have suspended operations due to poor security there.
It’s the dream of all naturalists: immortalising themselves by naming a new animal or plant species they have discovered. But scientists Robert Wallace and Humberto Gomez of the United States Wildlife Conservation Society have decided to carry out an internet sale to auction off the rights to name a monkey species the two men recently discovered in Bolivia.
South America’s political shift leftward continued on Tuesday with the inauguration of Uruguay’s first leftist president. Several of South America’s most prominent leftist leaders were expected to join thousands of Uruguayans celebrating the swearing-in of Tabare Vazquez, a 65-year-doctor who won the presidency in the October 31 election.
West African leaders said on Tuesday they have appointed a regional observer to help reconcile Togo’s polarised political parties ahead of presidential elections in April to choose a successor to long-time autocrat Gnassingbe Eyadema. The appointment of the observer is one in a series of proposals to accompany the Togo electoral process.
The government is to review the visa regime inherited from ”the bad old days”, Director General of Home Affairs Barry Gilder said on Tuesday. He was speaking to journalists on the final day of a regional meeting of the United Nations-backed Global Commission on International Migration.
The leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades opened fire on Tuesday on the empty car of Palestinian Interior Minister Nasr Yussef in the West Bank stronghold of Jenin, witnesses said. Zakaria Zubeidi scarred Yussef’s parked car with bullets at the Palestinian security services headquarters in Jenin. Yussef was reviewing security forces at the time.
White South Africans living in gated communities think of crime as a type of ethnic cleansing forcing them into semi-migration, a study showed on Tuesday. The study, titled Fear and Loathing in Johannesburg: Constructing New Identities within Gated Communities, was presented at an international symposium on gated communities or townhouses.
The federal executive of the New National Party, which ruled South Africa in the form of the apartheid National Party from 1948 to 1994, met in Johannesburg on Monday afternoon and took the unanimous decision to disband. The party opted to fall under the umbrella of the ruling African National Congress shortly after the national election in April last year.
Nelson Chisale was dead before he was thrown to lions near Hoedspruit in January last year, a Bloemfontein pathologist told the Phalaborwa Circuit Court on Tuesday.
Dr Leon Wagner was testifying in defence of Mark Scott-Crossley (37), who is on trial for Chisale’s murder with Simon Mathebula (43). Both have pleaded not guilty of the killing.