Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika on Thursday accused his predecessor of complicity in a plot by his own party to assassinate him — but said he forgave all those involved. Former president Bakili Muluzi’s spokesperson and a representative of the governing United Democratic Front rejected the claim as outrageous.
Doctors at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib used their medical knowledge to help devise coercive interrogation methods for detainees, including sleep deprivation, stress positions and other abuse, it was reported on Thursday. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine shows doctors were active participants in the abuse of prisoners.
The mother of Europe’s most prolific art thief was in court in France on Thursday, charged with throwing many of the invaluable paintings her son had stolen into the local canal. She also allegedly forced works of art down the waste-disposal system at their home in Alsace, eastern France, and put others out for the rubbish collectors to take away.
In a refugee camp set up in the grounds of a women’s college, seven-month-old Fatima is wailing in the arms of her grandmother. Thin and frail, the baby has survived the waves that pounded her beachside home only to find herself threatened by another killer: diarrhoea.
Iraq’s government extended a state of emergency for another 30 days on Thursday night ahead of a security lockdown for the first elections since the United States-led invasion. Unprecedented security controls will be imposed for the vote on January 30, including drastic travel restrictions and night-time curfews.
The Cape Town minstrels have a special place in the hearts of Capetonians. I think it is somewhere in the aorta. The doctors say it is too dangerous to operate, so there they stay. They were once called coons, but mercifully the vast lies that are racial stereotyping are a thing of the past. After 10 years of democracy we are free to call the Cape minstrels what they are: tone-deaf sequinned horrors of sartorial ghastliness.
The JSE Securities Exchange (JSE) rallied to a record high on Thursday, with a sliding rand fuelling a rally in heavyweight resources and dual-listed stocks. The weaker currency saw continued profit-taking in banks and retailers, however. The all-share index closed 0,97% higher at 12 800,520 after earlier reaching a best-to-date 12 865,470.
The South African labour market is bracing itself for countrywide strikes as disputes between the government and major unions over teachers’ salaries and the working conditions of prison warders reach boiling point. The South African Democratic Teachers Union has withdrawn its threat to strike next week as schools reopen in several provinces, but has threatened imminent industrial action if its grievances are not addressed.
In the crowded wards of African hospitals, coughs and bony bodies tell the story of a deadly return. Tuberculosis (TB), supposedly defeated 40 years ago, is back, riding on the Aids epidemic, and the world is ill-prepared, says the relief agency Médécins sans Frontières (MSF). TB kills two million people every year, nearly all in developing countries. Yet TB is curable.
Not the Mail & Guardian is Robert Kirby’s startling and savagely satirical parody of the Mail & Guardian newspaper. Any similarity between real people and characters portrayed here is anything but coincidental Schumacher looks for new challenge: Seven times formula one world champion Michael Schumacher has quit Ferrari for Minardi. Said Schumacher: ‘Minardi have made […]