Armed militias are continuing to commit atrocities against civilians in Sudan’s troubled western region of Darfur despite claims by Khartoum that the situation has improved, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday. HRW said that instead of disarming the Janjaweed militias, Khartoum has begun incorporating them into the police force.
Fans of Alicia Keys keep calling her number, but only JD Turner of Statesboro picks up the phone. Turner has the same number that Keys references in her love song Diary. ”I get 20 to 25 calls a day,” Turner said. ”Sometimes at 4:30am, and they say, ‘I want to talk to Alicia Keys.”’
Andre 3000 is the world’s best-dressed man, according to Esquire magazine. ”He’s a complete individual,” Nick Sullivan, Esquire‘s fashion director, said on Tuesday. ”But that’s really the point.” Andre 3000 is the usually over-the-top dressed half of hip-hip duo OutKast.
The three recognised trade unions at Telkom, the fixed line communications monopoly, have united to fight retrenchments at the company. ”Solidarity, the South African Communications Union and the Communication Workers Union resolved in Centurion today [Tuesday] to form an alliance against Telkom’s plans to retrench more than 4 100 workers over the next three years,” said Solidarity’s Dirk Hermann.
Zambia is providing partly subsidised Aids drugs to more than 12 000 people as part of its long-term goal to have 100 000 patients on life-prolonging treatment by next year, the health minister said on Tuesday. ”The drugs are now available in both public and private hospitals,” Health Minister Brian Chituwo told Parliament.
A young Zimbabwean scientist who has been championing the resurrection of a traditional African grain, sorghum, won a R100 000 fellowship at the second annual Women in Science awards in Johannesburg this week. It’s a welcome boost after five lonely years of study, when a series of supervisors abandoned her by emigrating, and petrol queues, inflation and food shortages became a fact of life in Harare.
Life assurer and financial services group Liberty’s headline earnings recovered from a low base in respect of the first six months of last year, increasing by 28,6% from 130 cents to 167,2 cents for the six months until June as a result of a favourable operational performance and better investment returns.
The two young men sitting cross-legged in a small room off the courtyard of the Imam Ali shrine looked like any of the fighters around them. Their beards were short and neat, their feet bare and their dress the simple dishdasha, the Arab robe. They were deferential to their militia commander and spoke idealistically of defeating the military might of the United States in Iraq’s holy city of Najaf.
A 10-year-old boy who was severely mutilated on a mountain in the Polokwane area last month died in hospital on Tuesday. Sello Chokwe’s attacker had hacked off his ear, hand, genitals and his skull had been damaged. According to Polokwane hospital doctor Joris Zandelanotte, Sello was in a coma in the intensive care unit until he died.
The Eastern Cape Technikon’s Umtata campus has been closed indefinitely after student unrest on the campus on Tuesday. Technikon spokesperson Angela Church said the campus was closed at 5pm in order to ensure the safety of students and staff as well as the institution’s property.