It may not be an Olympic discipline yet. But while athletes from around the world gather in Athens, another group of contestants will converge today in the small Bavarian town of Bayreuth for what they see as an equally important competition. About 21 contestants from countries as diverse as Ukraine, Holland and Britain will be taking part in the world’s first championships in dive-bombing.
Rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday called on the Zimbabwe government to release information on grain availability in the country as part of its obligations to ensure its citizens’ right to food. It called on the government to make the information public immediately saying that by withholding vital information on grain availability, the government was ”gambling with its citizens’ access to food”.
An Italian envoy will fly to Libya on Friday to discuss radical plans to set up ”reception centres” for would-be immigrants, with officials from both countries estimating that up to two million people have already massed on the north African coast in readiness for an opportunity to travel by boat to Europe.
The South Korean government confirmed on Wednesday that it is to create a new capital in what will be one of Asia’s biggest construction projects to date. Under the -billion scheme, a site in the sleepy region of Gongju-Yongi 160km south of Seoul will replace it as the seat of Parliament and government by 2020.
While some disgruntled customers would probably like to see South African telecommunications giant Telkom burn in hell, the parastatal this week took exception to the popular website Hellkom and threatened the creator with a R5-million lawsuit for copyright infringement.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=120223">Telkom sues website owner for R5m</a>
More than 40 South African women have discovered that they had been married without their knowledge, the Home Affairs Department said on Thursday. They were among about 2 000 women checking their marital status on the department’s records, as part of a campaign to curb the problem of women being unknowingly married to foreigners.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang will meet HIV/Aids experts in Johannesburg on Thursday to discuss reports of resistance to the drug nevirapine, her spokesperson said. The meeting follows a warning from the Medicines Control Council last month of signs of resistance to nevirapine as a monotheraphy.
Melbourne is under threat from an invader straight out of a horror film: a giant column of ants 96km across. The supercolony of Argentine ants — a species that arrived in the country from South America in the 1930s — has swamped the city. The insects do not harm humans but they disrupt the ecosystem and have been known to overwhelm and kill hatchlings in chicken farms.
Boris Spassky on Wednesday called on the United States to show mercy to his former chess rival Bobby Fischer, and challenged the authorities to arrest him, too. Fischer, who became world chess champion at the age of 29, was detained at Tokyo’s Narita airport last month while trying to leave Japan using an invalid passport.
Chaos erupted in Umtata on Wednesday when police used teargas and rubber bullets to forcibly evict students from the Eastern Cape Technikon. Police took action after an hour-long standoff with a group of students who stood at the main entrance of the institution refusing to leave the premises.