About -million is needed to fight the swarms of locusts that are marauding through West Africa, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, said on Wednesday. ”Our first request [in early July] was for nine million dollars, but as the funds did not arrive, the scale of the problem now calls for -million,” he said during a visit to the Senegalese capital.
A record number of cows were killed on Tuesday when lightning hit a farm near Herning on Jutland, reports said Thursday. The 31 cows were likely the highest number to date killed by a single lightning bolt in Denmark, TV-Midt-Vest reported, citing a joint information office operated by Danish insurance companies.
Four men detained in a raid on a suspected mercenary recruitment centre in Cape Town on Wednesday are being questioned by the Scorpions about possible illegal military activity. National Directorate of Public Prosecutions spokesperson Sipho Ngwema said on Thursday the Scorpions in the Western Cape had raided the offices of International Intelligence Risk Management in Parow. They took possession of two computers, files and stationery.
The value of civil judgements for debt declined by 20,5% year-on-year (y/y) in June to R541,8-million, Statistics South Africa said on Thursday. This compares with a 6,6% y/y drop in May to R526,5-million and December’s phenomenally high 64,5% y/y increase to R840,8-million.
Thursday’s announcement of a major, R123,8-million black economic empowerment (BEE) deal by international private equity group Brait, which will see BEE investors taking a 26% slice of the company’s South African subsidiary, is not the group’s first involvement in the BEE arena.
The JSE Securities Exchange (JSE) was powering ahead in noon trade on Thursday, fuelled by expectations of renewed rand weakness and a higher gold price. Strength was seen across the board, with advancers outnumbering decliners on the all-share index by almost three to one. Only two shares on the Top 40 index failed to post gains.
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.