Khat chewers are at greater risk of heart disease and liver damage, according to a paper published by Britain’s Royal Society of Medicine, which says doctors should be trained to spot harm caused by this habit. Sagar Saha and Clare Dollery of Londons Heart Hospital cite the case of a 33-year-old East African man, a daily khat-chewer, who was admitted to their hospital with a heart attack.
Authorities in Zimbabwe want all political parties to be registered to prevent ”rogue parties” contesting future elections, reports said on Monday. Zimbabwe is deeply divided between supporters of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
At least 42 people were injured when three blasts rocked a town in southern Ethiopia at the weekend in the latest of a series of mystery explosions to have hit the country, police said on Monday. The simultaneous blasts hit a hotel and two restaurants in Jijiga, about 720km south-east of Addis Ababa around 7pm on Saturday.
Mogadishu residents cautiously returned to their homes on Monday, taking advantage of a lull in fierce factional fighting to pick through rubble-strewn neighbourhoods in the capital. At 62 people have been killed and hundreds wounded, most of them civilians, in the latest round of fighting that began on Wednesday.
Wherever you go, people stare at you. Paparazzi take pictures, fans ask for autographs, absolute strangers wonder aloud if they once met you at a party. For the hard-pressed celebrity there’s only one way to get away from it all: hide on your own desert island.
Transnet and two of its pension funds have decided to dispose of their share in Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront, billed as South Africa’s most visited tourist destination. The remaining shareholder, the Transnet Retirement Fund, has yet to decide whether it will sell its 22,6% share, or retain it and push it up to 26%.
Perceptions of racism and the slow transformation in rugby were discussed at a sitting of Parliament’s sport portfolio committee on Monday. Briefing committee members, SA Rugby acknowledged that problems remained, but asked for recognition of what had been achieved.
India’s biggest distiller, the United Breweries Group, said on Monday it had dropped plans to buy French champagne group Taittinger as ”local groups” had stepped in with a new offer. According to French newspaper Les Echos, Belgian businessman Albert Frere is considering re-entering the bidding.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Monday urged Nigerians never to compromise on good governance and to shun corruption, in a speech to the nation marking the return of democracy seven years earlier. "We must never compromise on the need for good governance. It is the key to democratic sustainability and consolidation," Obasanjo said.
European leaders may embark on one of the European Union’s greatest rebranding exercises by changing the name of the European Constitution to ”basic law”. Monday is the first anniversary of the rejection of the Constitution by French voters, and support is growing for a German plan to revive the measure with a name change.