Monty Coles was 900m in the air when he discovered a stowaway peeking out at him from the plane’s instrument panel — a 1,35m black snake. Coles had left Charleston earlier for a leisurely flight alone over the West Virginia countryside last Saturday in his Piper Cherokee.
The minister of home affairs will hear on Monday whether she will have to give reasons why her department should not be compelled to supply information about the deportation of Pakistani national Khalid Mahmood Rashid. This follows an application by Rashid’s lawyer, Zehir Omar.
A high-level United Nations meeting on Aids agreed on Friday on a global strategy to fight the epidemic — but civil groups slammed the strategy for a lack of specific commitments and for coy references to high-risk groups like prostitutes. The declaration is the first of its kind since a landmark UN Aids summit in 2001.
No frontier marks the entrance to Spain’s Basque region, but the traveller passing by quaint villages on green hillsides has a clear sense of entering a distinct territory. It is not just the Basque flags here and there. It is, above all, the signs in a strange language unlike any other in the world.
The security guard strike could be over by next week, the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) said on Friday. Speaking to Satawu members gathered in central Johannesburg, Satawu general secretary Randall Howard said the union had heard from reliable sources that ”white employers” would return to negotiations.
Cable and locomotive battery theft east of Johannesburg has cost Spoornet over R140-million in lost revenue from disrupted traffic flow, the company said on Friday. ”The disruption has been on trains out of and into Johannesburg, particularly on the Natal corridor and Cape corridor,” said spokesperson Molatwane Likhethe.
The White House insisted on Friday that Iran had to suspend sensitive nuclear fuel work as a ”non-negotiable” element of a deal hammered out by world powers to limit its atomic ambitions. As Tehran came under growing pressure to accept the proposals, White House spokesperson Tony Snow said European nations would make a detailed presentation over ”the next couple of days”.
The Africa summit of the World Economic Forum closed on Friday with participants agreeing that the continent had come a long way and that the prospects for the continent experiencing record-high economic growth were positive. More than 700 political and business leaders, civil society representatives and academics attended the three-day event.
A shortage of fresh water will crimp South Africa’s economic growth if government fails to decrease demand and increase supply of this essential commodity, World Wildlife Fund-South Africa warned on Friday. The conservation organisation said if current usage rates continued, water demand would exceed supply by 2025.
Dissident Darfur rebels said on Friday they would sign an African Union-mediated peace deal for the troubled western Sudanese region and urged hold-outs to join them. Despite missing a Wednesday midnight deadline to agree to the pact or face possible sanctions, they said the AU was preparing an annex to the May 5 accord for them.