AN outbreak of meningitis that is sweeping across Africa has killed at least 3_500 people, the international Red Cross said on Wednesday. “From the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, a total of 38_000 cases have been documented, but many more are likely to have gone unreported,” said the International Federation of Red Cross and […]
A MAN who pleaded guilty to skinning and beheading a dog was sentenced by a North Carolina court to three years probation and ordered to read the “Lassie” books. Jason Vincent Revels, 19, was charged with felony animal cruelty in the November death of his mother’s mixed pit bull. At a hearing on Monday, Revels […]
THE captain and crew of a vessel suspected of ferrying children destined for slavery appeared in a Benin court on Monday, judicial sources said in the capital Cotonou. The investigating magistrate in charge of a probe into the status of 43 minors aboard the ship heard Nigerian Lawrence Oghototuya and his crew, who had been […]
EMMANUEL DEFOULOY, Brussels | Wednesday DECADES before the 1994 Rwandan genocide an anti-Tutsi apartheid created a mind-set in school children that Tutsis were a sub-human class, a middle-aged Tutsi woman in tears told a jury in an historic trial here this week. The system created both “consenting victims and potential executioners,” the woman, who escaped […]
A 61-year-old South African man who was fitted with an external artificial heart died on April 15 in Cape Town’s City Park Hospital, the facility disclosed on Monday. The man, who had asked not to be identified, was given the heart – a pump made from polyurethane with two ventricles – by a 10-member team […]
BELGIAN military intelligence has uncovered an illegal diamond trafficking network between Antwerp’s huge diamond market and Angolan guerrillas using the gems to buy arms, the Belgian daily Le Soir said on Monday. Le Soir said a secret military report entitled “Diamond trafficking from Angola, Belgium’s role,” contends that certain Belgian diamond merchants are dealing directly […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday JUDGE Nathan Erasmus, who is under constant police guard after receiving death threats when he sentenced two Pagad members to 11 life terms for murder, has collapsed from stress and is receiving medical treatment, the Cape Times reports. The judge was apparently told that it was not a question […]
ABHIK KUMAR CHANDA, Abuja | Wednesday NIGERIA may be hosting Africa’s biggest Aids conference on Thursday but its track record in combating the pandemic is pathetic, HIV sufferers say, recounting horror stories of discrimination, apathy and ignorance. Even worse, they say, is the official response to the pandemic. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, is home […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki charged on Tuesday that unnamed rivals are conspiring to oust him. His first term of office expires in three years, but rumours are rife that one or more rivals within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) will challenge him then. ”People have got natural ambitions. […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday FORMER premiers Tokyo Sexwale and Mathews Phosa have scorned allegations that they are part of a plot aimed at toppling President Thabo Mbeki. Former ANC party secretary-general Cyril Ramaphosa was also named on SA television as being part of the scheme. All three, who still have significant political support in […]