Burundi’s last remaining rebel group fired six mortar bombs at the capital overnight, hitting the area around the presidential palace but causing no casualties, the army said on Wednesday. Army spokesperson Major Adolphe Munirakiza said the National Liberation Forces bombarded the Kiriri district with 60mm mortars at around 11pm.
Another R400-million will be spent to upgrade Johannesburg’s electrical infrastructure, a city councillor said on Wednesday. This is in addition to R500-million already invested in the past two financial years to end the scourge of power cuts, said Brian Hlongwe, a councillor responsible for municipal services.
Shoko Asahara, whose charisma once drew thousands to his doomsday cult, has turned into a ”doll” in his decade of detention since the Tokyo subway attack, wearing diapers and mumbling incomprehensibly, his daughters say after a series of prison visits.
Victor Hugo, Molière, Marie Curie and Charles de Gaulle are still in there fighting. But Alexandre Dumas, Jean-Paul Sartre and Belmondo and even Napoleon are sadly out of the running. Nearly three years after the BBC’s hit Great Britons series, the French, not without some rather Gallic misgivings, have been asked to choose Le plus grand Français de tous les temps, or The greatest Frenchman ever.
A new Holocaust museum, designed to affirm Israel’s claim to be the principal keeper and interpreter of survivors’ memories, opened in Jerusalem on Tuesday. Fifteen presidents and prime ministers joined survivors at the dedication of the stark prism-shaped concrete structure cutting through the Mount of Remembrance.
Bernard Ebbers, the maverick former boss of WorldCom, was on Tuesday found guilty of taking a lead role in the largest fraud in corporate history and could now face the rest of his life in prison. The conviction is a landmark result for United States prosecutors seeking to restore confidence in corporate America.
A Mozambican immigrant was trampled to death by an elephant while trying to cross through the Kruger Park into South Africa. The woman — whose age is not known — was crossing with four others through the northernmost section of the park near Punda Maria, said park spokesperson Raymond Travers
Harvard’s beleaguered president was fighting for his job on Tuesday night after a humiliating no-confidence vote from his fellow academics. The 218-185 vote by members of the faculty of arts and science was ostensibly symbolic, with decisions about Lawrence Summer’s fate resting with the university’s governing board.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela is asking the Supreme Court of Appeal for leave to appeal against a series of fraud convictions. The Pretoria High Court early in February dismissed an application by Madikizela-Mandela for leave to appeal to the SCA for her conviction on 43 counts of fraud and a suspended sentence.
Protesters burned Japanese flags in Seoul on Wednesday as South Korea’s foreign affairs minister denounced Japan for stepping up its claim to disputed islets under Seoul’s control. Minister of Foreign Affairs Ban Ki-Moon condemned the move as ”deplorable”, while his ministry said the Tokyo government must take full blame for all consequences.