Thirty people were killed when a bus crashed over a cliff into a river in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province. Emergency service spokesman Chris Botha said the bus landed upside down in the river after a 80-metre fall. Thirty people were killed with at least 30 other passengers trapped inside.Read the rest of this entry »

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CCTV:A Thief casually walks into a computer store and sprays the shop assistant in the face before running off with a laptop.

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Part of a documentary on sky about crime in johannesburg, South Africa. It shows criminals robbing cars and getting shot at.

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DEPUTY Safety and Security Minister Susan Shabangu’s controversial “shoot to kill” comment has received African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma’s backing. Speaking at a gala dinner in KwaZulu-Natal on Friday night, Zuma said: “If you have a deputy minister saying the kind of things that the deputy minister was saying, this is what we need to happen. What the deputy minister was saying is, what we are to be doing is dealing with the criminals, rather than talking about it,” said Zuma. Shabangu told an anticrime rally in Pretoria last week that police should “kill the bastards” and leave concerns about the regulations to her.

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Zimbabwe's opposition claimed victory Monday in the elections, while a slow trickle in official results raised fears that supporters of longtime President Robert Mugabe were rigging the count. Mugabe has been accused of stealing previous elections, but that was before Zimbabwe's once thriving farm economy nearly collapsed and before leading members of the ruling party openly defied him. Independent observers said trends supported the main opposition party's contention that it was leading in the presidential race, but the monitors said the edge would not be enough to avoid a runoff.

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Forty humanitarian agencies have warned of an impending catastrophe in Somalia unless urgent action is taken.
The warning came as seven people were killed in the latest fighting between Islamist insurgents and Ethiopian troops supporting Somalia's government.
Reports say insurgents attacked and briefly took control of the southern town of Jowhar. One million Somalis have left their homes because of insecurity and hunger, the aid agencies say.

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Four people, including two children, were killed while at least 120 shacks were destroyed in a fire which broke out at dawn in a slum area near Cape Town, a safety official said. "We lost four lives, including two children. At least 120 shacks were destroyed in the fire," Wilfred Solomons-Johannes, the city's disaster risk management centre spokesman, told AFP.

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The commander of the UN-African Union force in Darfur has said the mission could last for the next 10 years.
Gen Martin Luther Agwai told the BBC that tension with Chad made the conflict more difficult to resolve.
The success of the UN-AU force will depend on what happens both internally in Sudan and externally with the international community, he said.
Peace talks stalled at the end of last year and there is little sign of fresh negotiations starting any time soon.

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Sudan (AFP) - Relief workers may battle chronic insecurity to deliver aid to the tens of thousands displaced by the Darfur war, but recipients in this southern Sudanese market trade handouts for luxuries. Having scrambled for newly arrived aid, Darfuris taking refuge in the desolate Boro Medina camp in Western Bahr el-Ghazal state carry off the booty to barter for something tastier at the local trading post.
There are no tarpaulins in the camp, home to 3,000 men, women and children from African tribes who fled the conflict in western Sudan, but many prefer to sleep under wattle-and-reed shelters and exchange the canvas for meat.

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Kenya's parliament is to begin debating legislation that would bring into force a deal designed to end post-election violence. Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga signed the agreement last month. It provides for Mr Odinga to enter the government as the prime minister, as well as creating posts for two deputy prime ministers. But parties have clashed over how much authority Mr Odinga will actually have. President Kibaki claimed victory in presidential elections on 27 December, but Mr Odinga said the vote was rigged.

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South Africa announced Monday that it was reversing a 1995 ban on killing elephants to help control their booming population, drawing instant outrage from animal-rights activists. Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk did not say how many elephants could be killed, saying only that some animal-rights groups' estimates of 2,000 to 10,000 were "hugely inflated."
"Culling will only be allowed as a last option and under very strict conditions," van Schalkwyk told reporters. "Our simple reality is that elephant population density has risen so much in some southern African countries that there is concern about impacts on the landscape, the viability of other species and the livelihoods and safety of people living within elephant ranges."

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A former leader of an armed group in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been sent to the International Criminal Court (ICC) accused of ordering the deaths of about 200 villagers in 2003, officials say. Mathieu Ngudjolo, the former chief of the Nationalist and Integrationist Front, was arrested in Kinshasa and sent to the Hague on Thursday. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor at the ICC, said the transfer of Ngudjolo, accused of ordering his men to "wipe out" the entire northeastern village of Bogoro, "completes the first phase of the DR Congo investigations" focusing on crimes in the Ituri region.

via english.aljazeera.net

Kenya has introduced a free secondary schooling education programme with a target of raising student enrolment to 1.4 million by the end of the year. President Mwai Kibaki said the government will pay tuition fees for students while parents will meet boarding costs and buy uniforms.
This was a key pledge in his campaign for last year's election. violence over poll-rigging claims has left some 1,000 people dead and 600,000 displaced and many schools are closed. His government introduced universal free primary education after he was first elected in 2002.

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An overnight fire destroyed a 610-year-old landmark that was considered the top national treasure, officials said Monday. Police said the cause of the blaze was unclear but officials said arson was suspected.The fire broke out Sunday night and burned down the wooden structure at the top of the Namdaemun gate that once formed part of a wall that encircled the South Korean capital.Some 360 firefighters fought to bring the blaze under control, according to Lee Sang-joon, an official with the National Emergency Management Agency. No one was injured, he said.

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The Chad government has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in much of the country after rebels attacked the capital, N'Djamena, last weekend. The curfew applies in the capital and six provinces in the south and east, the prime minister announced. At least 100 civilians were killed in the fighting, aid workers say. Meanwhile, President Idriss Deby asked the European Union to deploy peacekeepers to the country "as quickly as possible".
Rebel forces say they have regrouped near the town of Mongo, 600 km (375 miles) east of N'Djamena.

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