Astronauts on the International Space Station and visiting space shuttle Atlantis said goodbye on Monday as they closed the hatch between their two ships in preparation for the shuttle’s departure on Tuesday. The space travellers spoke warm words of friendship and shook hands before the seven Atlantis crewmembers floated into their spacecraft.
Vilma Espin, the wife of acting Cuban president Raul Castro and one of the most powerful women in Cuba long before her husband took over office from his convalescing brother Fidel Castro, died on June 18. She was 77. State-run television said Espin died from complications from a long illness.
A senior Hamas leader in Gaza on Monday night said the movement was hoping to win the imminent release of the kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a hardliner within the Hamas movement, said there was a fresh effort under way to negotiate for Johnston’s release.
Old Shakey’s musical past is catching up with him, writes Lloyd Gedye.
While Botswana has succeeded in decreasing its poverty rate, it is unlikely that the country will achieve the United Nations’s fourth Millennium Development Goal of decreasing child mortality rates by two-thirds by 2015. Figures have shown an increase in child mortality between the 1990s and the 2000s.
Zimbabwean media practitioners have launched a self-regulatory media body for journalists despite government threats of unspecified action against them. The non-governmental Media Alliance of Zimbabwe launched the Media Council of Zimbabwe (MCZ) earlier this month. If MCZ members have their way, the ruling Zanu-PF will cease its stranglehold on the operations of the country’s media
The United States military said it had launched a huge offensive against al Qaeda north of Baghdad on Tuesday involving 10 000 soldiers, one of the single biggest operations since the end of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The military said that 22 militants had been killed in the early hours of the offensive, which is taking place around the city of Baquba.
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The occasion of the Cape Town Book Fair seems a good time to reflect on the new world of African literature. I was in Arusha a few days ago and spent a series of memorable evenings with some remarkable Africans, many of them Nigerians. And late, late into the night, people started to talk about Biafra.
Cooking and cleaning are to become more expensive, the South African Oil Processors’ Association said on Monday. It said this was because of global shortages of raw materials for cooking oil, margarine and soap. The world palm-oil price had risen by 50% and that of Soya-bean and sunflower oil prices by 35% in the past four months.