Seven children who returned to the United States after being left to fend for themselves in Nigeria by their adoptive mother are restarting their lives in foster care. The three boys and four girls, ranging in age from eight to 16, were discovered living in squalor in an orphanage by Warren Beemer, a pastor from a San Antonio church who was in Nigeria on a tour of his church’s missions.
The radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was reported on Wednesday night to have accepted a peace deal that could end the violent two-week uprising in Najaf and see his militia leave the city’s Imam Ali Shrine. Al-Sadr’s spokesperson confirmed that the cleric had accepted a proposal from the Iraqi national conference to pull his fighters out of the holy city and turn his militia into a political movement.
Former Western Cape premier Peter Marais was let off the hook in the Cape High Court on Wednesday on a sexual harassment civil claim brought against him by former provincial social services minister Freda Adams. Adams had claimed a total of R2 421 342 from Marais for sexual harassment and defamation.
Thabiso Mahowa is one of about seven million South Africans who live in squatter camps, deprived of basic services like clean water, proper sewerage, roads, and a house he can proudly call home. Now the country’s major economic centre, Johannesburg, is bracing itself for one of its biggest challenges since the demise of apartheid — to do away with the squatter camps, known as informal settlements, within three years.
The University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science has appointed former South African Reserve Bank deputy governor Gill Marcus as the Wendy Appelbaum professor of policy, leadership and gender studies from October 1. Marcus was deputy governor of the Reserve Bank for five years until her contract expired on June 30.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, suffered a massive blow to his project to withdraw from settlements in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday night when his party refused to allow him to invite new partners into the government who might have backed his plans.
Scientists using satellites have mapped huge craters under the Antarctic ice sheet caused by an asteroid as big as the one believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65-million years ago. The evidence showed that an asteroid measuring between five and 11km across had broken up in the atmosphere and five large pieces had hit the Earth, creating multiple craters over an area measuring 2 080km by 3 840km.
Insensitive computer programmers with little knowledge of geography have cost the giant Microsoft company hundreds of millions of dollars in lost business and led hapless company employees to be arrested by offended governments. The problem has damaged the company’s reputation and the ”trust rating,” which is seen as key to keeping the company competitive, has dropped, a senior Microsoft executive revealed on Wednesday.
He is sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, able to crush opposition parties, ban newspapers and ignore the courts. But King Mswati III of Swaziland is proving powerless against an HIV/Aids epidemic ravaging his kingdom. The landlocked country tucked between South Africa and Mozambique was recently identified by the United Nations as having the world’s highest infection rate, with 38,6% of pregnant mothers testing positive.
Once you’ve made it past the security checkpoints, passport control and customs officers at Johannesburg International airport, you’ll find yourself in a shoppers’ paradise, festooned with flashing lights declaring the vendors to be "tax free" and "duty free". This is a dangerous phase of your trip.