<i>Crazy Frog</i>, a super-annoying cellphone ringtone that everybody loves to hate, looks set to hit number one in the British singles chart this weekend. German dance duo Bass Bumber’s take on <i>Crazy Frog</i> has been outselling Coldplay’s new single by four to one in music retailer HMV’s outlets.
At a school in a popular district of Cairo, a man urges Egyptians to vote on a key electoral reform, crying ”Your vote matters! Say yes to democracy” — but many polling stations on Wednesday remained deserted amid opposition calls for a boycott of the referendum to allow for Egypt’s first-ever contested presidential race.
North Korean officials have denied reports that the communist regime is preparing to conduct a nuclear test, a Czech delegation said on Wednesday following a visit to Pyongyang this week. However, North Korea is still reluctant to return to six-way talks aimed at winding down its nuclear programme.
Limited access to health care, violence against women, and deaths in police custody in South Africa are among issues highlighted in an Amnesty International report on human rights abuses released on Wednesday. ”One of the issues that bugs us is limited access to health care,” said Amnesty International South Africa’s chairperson.
Hundreds of disabled, destitute and elderly people, children and volunteer welfare workers marched through the streets of Pretoria on Wednesday to press for increased government subsidies. Chanting ”Welfare is bleeding, the nation is dying”, the protesters made their way along a few blocks to Strijdom Square in the city centre.
Unlisted black-owned Calulo Investments has — for an undisclosed amount — snatched a 15% shareholding in Chlor-Alkali Holdings-held NCP Chlorchem, the company announced on Wednesday. Calulo chairperson Mkhuseli Faku and MD Mpho Diale have, as a result, joined the NCP board.
At least 10 people were killed and several others trapped when a building collapsed in Nigeria’s southern oil city of Port Harcourt, police said on Wednesday. The four-storey building under construction on Sani Abacha Road in the city centre suddenly caved in on Tuesday, killing at least 10 construction workers.
Former Guinea-Bissau president Kumba Yala and a number of soldiers moved into the presidential palace in the capital Bissau for a few hours early on Wednesday as tension simmered in the small West African state. Yala was ousted in a bloodless military coup in September 2003 but declared on May 15 that he is still president.
More than one million Mozambicans are reeling from a drought that has hit the south of the country and only little more than a tenth are getting food aid. Silvano Langa, head of the National Disaster Management Institute, said he hoped the shortage would not be as ”acute as in past years when we had to ward off the combined effects of drought and war”.
Separatist rebels in Angola’s oil-rich enclave of Cabinda say they have shot down a military helicopter, killing its crew, contradicting government reports that a police helicopter crashed into a mountain as a result of bad weather. Despite intensive searches by the army, police and locals, the helicopter has not been found.