POLICE near Port Elizabeth were forced on Monday to blow up a stranded whale. “It was not pleasant, it was horrible to see but it was the humane thing to do,” said Wendy Kant, a research assistant at the Bayworld aquarium in the southeastern city of Port Elizabeth. “The police carried out a demolition-controlled explosion […]
A 78-YEAR-old Egyptian music agent said on Tuesday he wanted a mention in the Guinness book of world records for having married 203 times. Mustafa Semeda, an agent for traditional Egyptian bands in Cairo, told journalists he first got married in 1947 and has since then been married to another 202 women, most of them […]
THE Sudanese government army denied on Wednesday rebel claims that its units attacked oilfields and destroyed oil production installations at Higlieg town in southern Unity State, official media reported on Wednesday. Suna news agency and Omdurman Radio quoted army representative General Mohamed Beshir Suleiman dismissing as an “unfulfilled dream” a claim to that affect by […]
A PLAY scheduled for the Edinburgh Festival on the recommendation of the British army in Sierra Leone has been cancelled because the British government will not let the actors in the country, media reported on Tuesday. The play, “Kpundeh”, which attempts to predict what will happen when the killing stops in Sierra Leone, so impressed […]
MORE than 4 000 Internet users in Ethiopia are under threat from the spread of a “Code Red”-style computer virus, the government’s science and technology commission (STC) warned on Tuesday. An expert with the commission, quoted by Ethiopian news agency ENA, warned that Internet and e-mail users here should guard against the virus by taking […]
THE cost of bread in Zimbabwe has more than doubled since January, after a seventh price hike in as many months, a consumer watchdog said on Tuesday. The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ) said bread prices went up by 15% this week, but the domestic Ziana news agency reported a hike of between 7,5% and […]
Harare | Thursday ZIMBABWE Home Minister John Nkomo said this week that white farmers and not pro-government war veterans are behind the recent upsurge in violence in the countryside. “No war veterans have been causing any problems on the farms,” Nkomo said late on Wednesday. “It is true the farmers have been attacking properly and […]
JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Thursday HIGH telephone costs in South Africa have limited the growth of the local Internet industry, international survey company Nielsen NetRatings reported on Wednesday. Nielsen NetRatings said in a statement that an estimated 1,5-million South Africans now had home Internet access, but that users only spent an average of four hours […]
A NIGERIAN snake charmer, Umaru Daura, picked up a 100 000 naira ($900) reward in Kano on Tuesday after slaying a snake reputed to have killed 34 people. Daura walked into the state government headquarters in Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city, Tuesday afternoon with the corpse of a slim 1,5-metre long snake. The killer snake, […]
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki acknowledged in a television interview to be aired on Monday evening that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is not listening to him. Interviewer Tim Sebastian of the BBC’s “Hard Talk” told Mbeki: “He’s not listening is he?”, to which the president replied: “Well he hasn’t.” Mbeki has engaged in “quiet diplomacy” in a […]