Zimbabwe police on Tuesday arrested a leader of a teachers’ union at a university in the eastern city of Mutare for allegedly addressing students without police clearance, a lawyer said. Alec Muchadehama, the secretary general of the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe, was arrested at Africa University in Mutare, according to his lawyer.
The food relief programme for flood affected victims in western Zambia has been inadequate because the country’s government did not release sufficient funds for logistical support, the latest Famine Early Warning Systems Network report on the country says.
A hard-working hack heads for the United States, but not before leaving South African journalists some chewy food for thought. Henry Jeffreys, chairperson of the South African National Editors’ Forum, talks about his term in office just before it comes to an end.
A renewed drive to immunise Nigerian children living amid the world’s worst outbreak of polio has run into fierce opposition from parents and Islamic teachers. As the five-day campaign approached its end, officials in the northern city of Kano admitted they would not hit its target of vaccinating four million under-fives against the crippling disease.
North Korea is deploying a new missile which may be able to strike the United States mainland with a nuclear warhead, a report in Jane’s Defence Weekly says on Wednesday. The authoritative military publication said the navy had customised a dozen scrapped Russian submarines to launch ballistic weapons of mass destruction.
Deputy President Jacob Zuma on Tuesday announced that South Africa would host a new round of talks on Burundi to finalise an agreement on power sharing and on holding elections. The two days of talks will begin on Wednesday at the presidential state guest house in Pretoria and will continue until Thursday.
Reports that 40 000km of the KwaZulu-Natal road network have disappeared are ”untrue and misleading”, provincial transport department head Kwazi Mbanjwa said on Tuesday. Mbanjwa said the decline in maintenance of provincial and national roads started in the 1970s and KwaZulu-Natal had ”inherited roads from a number of authorities in the province”.
During the year to June 2004, Kumba Resources’ Sishen iron ore mine achieved record production and the group also achieved record coal production and sales volumes. There were also higher sales of power station coal (1,3-million tons or 10%) to Eskom’s Matimba and Majuba power stations, while higher demand for coking coal and improved operating efficiencies increased other domestic sales by 4%.
Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin said on Tuesday he wanted to create a truth and reconciliation commission for Iraq, modelled on the experiences of post-apartheid South Africa. Such a commission, ”based on confessions and pardons, would be a way to strengthen the feeling of national unity”, said Amin.
Private Lynndie England, the woman who has become the emblem of America’s shame over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, showed no alarm when confronted with pictures of her gloating over naked and cowering Iraqi prisoners, a military hearing was told on Tuesday.