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/ 24 February 2007
The Health Department has approached President Thabo Mbeki to appoint an acting minister while Manto Tshabalala-Msimang recovers in hospital, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported. ”We are continuing, although it is difficult for us without leadership,” said departmental spokesperson Sibani Mngadi.
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/ 24 February 2007
Port Elizabeth high-school girls were organising ”cocaine parties” via their cellphones, the Herald Online reported on Saturday. At least 20 girls, mainly from high schools in the city, were organising cocaine parties through the cellphone chat service MXit, said Gerrie Cronje, chief executive of a rehabilitation centre.
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/ 24 February 2007
The scientist backing nutritionist Patrick Holford’s claims on vitamin C and Aids was one of the key speakers at a conference organised by the controversial Dr Matthias Rath in Johannesburg just more than a year ago. Holford, who claims vitamin C is more effective in treating Aids than an antiretroviral drug, is giving a series of workshops in South Africa.
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/ 23 February 2007
Emergency workers on Friday surveyed damage to areas of Mozambique left devastated by Cyclone Favio, which left at least three people dead, scores injured and flattened most of the worst-hit town. Red Cross spokesperson Tapiwa Gomo said he had received differing reports that three or four people had been killed in and around the town of Vilankulo.
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/ 23 February 2007
Campaigning for Sunday’s presidential election in Senegal has begun to close with tensions raised by clashes between supporters of incumbent leader Abdoulaye Wade and those of one of his main challengers. The wooing of voters officially ends at midnight on Friday, sealing three weeks of a generally peaceful campaign marred by the violence on Wednesday night.
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/ 23 February 2007
Prime Minister Pascal Yoadimnadji of Chad died early on Friday in a Paris hospital after a brain haemorrhage, the ambassador of the impoverished north-central African state said. The premier had been flown from the Chadian capital, Ndjamena, on Wednesday after he collapsed with high blood pressure.
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/ 23 February 2007
The Pietermaritzburg High Court on Friday dismissed an application that would have stopped negotiations over the building of the new King Shaka International Airport north of Durban. In their papers, the applicants said that they had been unfairly disqualified as a bidder for the work.
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/ 23 February 2007
The Afrikaans language is being eroded in many spheres of society, former president FW de Klerk said on Friday. ”I find the systematic erosion of the rights and claims of Afrikaans, as established in the Constitution, unacceptable,” De Klerk said at the University of Pretoria’s Afrikaans language conference.
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/ 23 February 2007
A New Zealand high school has apologised for giving students a homework assignment to plan a murder and describe how they would get rid of the body, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. The principal of Howick College in Auckland, Bill Dimery, apologised to the parents of one 14-year-old boy who complained.
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/ 23 February 2007
An Israeli couple who bought sandals for an impoverished man has learned the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished. They were ordered to pay damages when the recipient of their gift said the footwear caused him back problems. They bought a needy fellow resident a pair of Italian-made orthopaedic sandals in April last year.