China's shipment to bolster Mugabe
Fears were growing yesterday that Robert Mugabe's regime was strengthened ahead of a presidential election with a secret shipment of arms from China.
Reports said the weapons -- including three-million bullets, mortar bombs and rocket-propelled grenades -- were flown into Harare.
Student 'tortured into confessing'
Pervez Kambaksh, the Afghan student sentenced to death after being accused of downloading internet reports on women's rights, yesterday pleaded innocent to charges of blasphemy. He told an appeal court in Kabul that he was tortured into confessing.
Mr Kambaksh (24) denied that he was responsible for producing anti-Islamic literature.
New discovery of subsea creatures
Millions of starfish-like creatures have been found in a novel colony on a subsea mountaintop south of New Zealand, aiding knowledge of mysterious seamounts that dot the oceans, scientists said yesterday.
Tens of millions of tiny brittlestars were found on a peak 90-metres below the sea surface on the subsea Macquarie Range stretching towards Antarctica.
12 dead in city mob violence
Mobs rampaged through suburbs of Johannesburg in a frenzy of anti-foreigner violence over the weekend, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens.
Angry residents accused foreigners -- many of them Zimbabweans -- of taking scarce jobs and housing.
Breast cancer link to lack of vitamin D
Women with a vitamin D deficiency when they are diagnosed with breast cancer have an increased risk of dying within 10 years, research found.
Patients whose levels of the vitamin are below average are twice as likely to have the cancer spread.
