Former South African president Nelson Mandela and United States First Lady Laura Bush campaigned in two South African cities this week against the spread of Aids. Mandela, about to turn 87, urged young people to use condoms and not to have sex prematurely, and recruited four new ambassadors for his 46664 campaign.
Relatives desperately sought news of their loved ones on Thursday as medical workers struggled to identify mangled corpses a day after about 150 people died in Pakistan’s worst train crash in 15 years. Stations across the country have been thronged with people frantically searching victim lists posted by the authorities.
New information and pictures of former president Nelson Mandela, his life and his time in prison will be available to South Africa from November.
Europeans have been invited to throw themselves into the river on Sunday for their first ”Big Jump,” a day called to advocate clean and living waterways through public awareness events across 12 European Union countries.
Tens of thousands of Filipinos marched through the financial district of Manila on Wednesday demanding that President Gloria Arroyo resign over allegations that she tried to rig last year’s presidential election. One of the protest organisers, Wilson Fortaleza, described the march as ”a preview for a bigger storm”.
A new United Nations agreement to track trade in arms is attacked on Thursday as toothless and riddled with loopholes by human rights groups which have seen a copy of the secret deal. The agreement, to be discussed at the UN on Thursday, excludes ammunition, shells and explosives.
About 700 illegal occupants were evicted from a Bree Street office building in central Johannesburg on Thursday. The building was pronounced unsafe by the Johannesburg City Council. A municipal spokesperson said between 500 and 700 people were evicted, and those left homeless said they were ”desperate, confused and stranded”.
Thin Sandar, a chicken-seller in Myanmar, had always dreamed of being a man. When she inexplicably grew a penis last month, the 21-year-old treated it as an awe-inspiring omen — as have the thousands of stunned villagers who have travelled to a pagoda to see him.
A corpse caused a traffic jam on a Dallas, Texas, highway after it fell off a pick-up truck late on Tuesday, local media reported. The body was being transported to a Shreveport, Louisiana, funeral home when it fell off the truck and landed in the fast lane, <i>The Dallas Morning News</i> reported on Wednesday.
Harry Potter is ready to cast a spell over the book industry this weekend, as the sixth volume in the boy-wizard series looks set to become the world’s biggest-selling novel as soon as it goes on sale. In South Africa, the price for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is set to range from R129 to R249 a copy.