Former Liberian President Charles Taylor made a surprise appearance at the United Nations Special Court for Sierra Leone on Tuesday after having boycotted his war crimes trial since it began in early June.
A new train — the Soweto Business Express — is set to entice car commuters to use public transport, Transport Minister Jeff Radebe said, launching the service in Soweto on Tuesday. According to the South African Rail Commuter Corporation, the train’s allure lies in its comfort, speed and extra facilities.
Twice as many children were abandoned in the past year compared to the year before, the Johannesburg Child Welfare centre said. Thousands of children a year are being abandoned, with the number reaching at least 1 200 in three provinces alone, media reports said on Tuesday.
With earnings of maybe R40-million from the movie <i>The World’s Fastest Indian</i>, Sir Anthony Hopkins did much better from Herbert James Munro’s love for his 1920 Indian Scout than the eccentric genius from New Zealand did. Gavin Foster looks at the life of Munro, one filled with crashes and motorcycle maintenance.
An Indian doctor was detained in Australia for questioning in connection with a suspected al-Qaeda plot to detonate car bombs in London and Scotland as he tried to leave the country. The detention of the hospital registrar at Brisbane airport widened the international dimension of the investigation.
African leaders argued fiercely on Monday over whether to rapidly create a single state stretching from the Cape to Cairo, with one small group threatening to break away. Delegates said the atmosphere in an African Union summit was charged as a group of states led by Libya’s Moammar Gadaffi and Senegal’s Abdoulaye Wade argued with a more gradualist majority led by South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki.
Between 510 000 and 740 000 new jobs a year are needed to meet the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (Asgisa) target of halving unemployment by 2014, according to Merrill Lynch. The economy has grown by more than 4% a year over the past three years and figures show this has added only about 500 000 jobs each year.
United States President George Bush created a political storm on Monday by intervening to stop the disgraced White House aide, Lewis ”Scooter” Libby, from going to jail. Bush, in a statement, said the prison sentence imposed on Libby, who was found guilty of perjury in a complex spy case linked to the Iraq war, was too harsh.
The summit between presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin ended on Monday without a breakthrough on the issues that have brought relations between the two to the lowest point since the Cold War. The Bush administration hoped the informal setting would be conducive to diplomacy.
After years of relative calm, the yakuza have recently captured the public imagination in Japan. Shoko Tendo’s story, <i>Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster’s Daughter</i>, has become a surprise bestseller in Japan in 2004, shining a light into a dark and little-understood corner of modern Japan.