The Jamuna River burst its banks and surged through 25 villages while residents slept in northern Bangladesh, killing at least 13 people as homes, crops and trees were washed away. About 10 000 villagers were washed out of their flimsy homes. The toll from monsoon flooding in Bangladesh and its neighbours has reached 339.
Think of Aids in Africa and the odds are that you do not visualise anything like the infectious-disease care clinic in Gaborone, Botswana — a place of life, not death. Several hundred patients turn up each day, and increasingly they come not on stretchers or in wheelchairs but on foot.
Marks and Spencer shares tumbled on Thursday after the British tycoon Philip Green dropped his proposed takeover offer for the group, ratcheting up the pressure on its new management to deliver results. The billionaire retail magnate abandoned a third informal offer for the century-old British retailer late on Wednesday.
The charisma of Nelson Mandela and the cheque book of Bill Gates joined forces at the International Aids Conference in Bangkok on Thursday to lay assault on tuberculosis (TB). Mandela branded TB a silent slayer in the HIV/Aids pandemic, while Gates’s charity unveiled a ,7-million grant.
Don’t forget about TB, says Mandela
Iraq’s vital oil industry was again targeted as saboteurs launched a series of attacks that damaged pipelines at seperate sites in the north and south of the country. Also in the north, an unidentified police officer with the state-run oil company was gunned down at a checkpoint near a pipeline in Riyad.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118734">Provincial governor assassinated</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118765">Twin car bombs kill 13 in iraq</a>
The debate on how best to provide anti-retroviral medication to HIV-positive citizens has taxed the ingenuity of many an African government — not least that of Guinea. However, the administration of this country now appears to be making citizens the victim of its own good intentions.
Close to 21Â 000 members of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) are likely to embark on strike action on July 26 if a meeting between union representatives and car-manufacturer CEOs does not bring results next week Tuesday. This was among several announcements made by Numsa on Thursday.
After initially sagging in the wake of a soft euro, the South African rand righted itself and is stuck in a narrow range against the dollar in a quiet market. According to dealers, the release of United States producer inflation data later on Thursday will give the dollar direction.
Niger’s Prime Minister, Hama Amadou, was unhurt when a military helicopter he was travelling in crashed on Wednesday in the east of the country, a source close to him said. Amadou was on a campaign tour for July 24 municipal elections when the crash occurred at Magaria, about 100km south of Zinder.
Swarms of locusts have arrived in northeast Senegal, sources reported on Wednesday, invading earlier than in previous years and threatening crops during the growing season. On Monday Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade wrote to the Group of Eight industrialised countries, calling on them to declare war on the locusts.