DAKAR, Senegal — A fierce cholera epidemic is spreading through the coastal slums of West Africa, killing hundreds and sickening many more in one of the worst regional outbreaks in years, health experts said.

By ADAM NOSSITER (from nytimes.com)

Cholera, transmitted through contact with contaminated feces, was made worse this year by an exceptionally heavy rainy

season that flooded the sprawling shantytowns in Freetown and Conakry, the capitals of Sierra Leone and neighboring Guinea.

In both countries, about two-thirds of the population lack toilets, a potentially lethal threat in the rainy season because of the contamination of the water supply. Doctors Without Borders said there had been nearly twice as many cholera cases so far this year as there were in the same period in 2007 in Sierra Leone and Guinea, when it said the area experienced its last major outbreak.

Already, more than 13,000 people suffering from the disease’s often fatal symptoms — diarrhea, vomiting and severe dehydration — have been admitted to hospitals in the two nations’ capitals, and 250 to 300 have died, Doctors Without Borders said.

(from nbcnews.com)

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, a senior Africa figurehead, died of an infection while being treated abroad for an undisclosed illness, state-run television said on Tuesday. Speculation that Meles, 57, was seriously ill grew after he failed to attend an African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa last month. “Prime Minister Zenawi suddenly passed away last night. Meles was recovering in a hospital overseas for the past two months but died of a sudden infection at 11:40 (on Monday night),” state television said. Hailemariam Dessalegne, the deputy prime minister, was expected to be sworn in early Tuesday, according to the Twitter account of the Addis Fortune newspaper in Addis Ababa.

South African police officers killed more than 30 striking workers at a Lonmin PLC platinum mine who charged a line of officers trying to disperse them, authorities said Friday. (from yahoo.com)

Mining, according to the Chamber of Mines:

• Creates one million jobs (500 000 direct and 500 000 indirect).
• Accounts for about 18% of GDP (8.6% direct, 10% indirect and induced).
• Is a critical earner of foreign exchange at more than 50%.

The shooting Thursday is one of the worst in South Africa since the end of the apartheid era.
Police ministry spokesman Zweli Mnisi told The Associated Press on Friday that more than 30 people were killed. He said an investigation into the shooting near Marikana, about 70 kilometers (40 miles) northwest of Johannesburg was underway.

The shooting happened Thursday afternoon after police failed to get the striking miners to hand over machetes, clubs and other weapons.
Some miners did leave, though others carrying weapons began war chants and soon started marching toward the township near the mine, said Molaole Montsho, a journalist with the South African Press Association who was at the scene.

The police opened up with a water cannon first, then used stun grenades and tear gas to try and break up the crowd, Montsho said.

Suddenly, a group of miners rushed through the underbrush and tear gas at a line of police officers. Officers immediately opened fire, with miners falling to the ground. Dozens of shots were fired by police armed with automatic rifles and pistols. […]

It was an astonishing development in a country that has been a model of stability since racist white rule ended with South Africa’s first all-race elections in 1994. The shooting recalled images of white police firing at anti-apartheid protesters in the 1960s and 1970s, but in this case it was mostly black police firing at black mine workers.

It remains unclear what sparked the miners’ fatal charge at police. Mnisi, the police ministry spokesman, claimed the miners shot at police as well, using one of the weapons they stole from officers Monday.

“We had a situation where people who were armed to the teeth, attack and killed others — even police officers,” the spokesman said in a statement Thursday night. “What should police do in such situations when clearly what they are face with are armed and hardcore criminals who murder police?”

President Jacob Zuma said he was “shocked and dismayed at this senseless violence.”

“We believe there is enough space in our democratic order for any dispute to be resolved through dialogue without any breaches of the law or violence,” Zuma said in a statement.

Barnard O. Mokwena, an executive vice president at Lonmin, would say only: “It’s a police operation.” In a statement earlier Thursday, Lonmin had said striking workers would be fired if they did not appear at their shifts Friday.

“The striking (workers) remain armed and away from work,” the statement read. “This is illegal.”

While the initial walkout and protest focused on wages, the ensuing violence has been fueled by the struggles between the dominant National Union of Mineworkers and the upstart Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union. Disputes between the two unions escalated into violence earlier this year at another mine.

Mining drives the economy of South Africa, which remains one of the world’s dominant producers of platinum, gold and chromium. Lonmin is the world’s third largest platinum producer and its mine at Marikana produces 96 percent of all its platinum. The violence has shaken the precious metals market, as platinum futures ended up $39, or 2.8 percent, at $1,435.20 an ounce troy. in trading Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Lonmin stock plunged 6.76 percent Thursday on the London Stock Exchange. The company’s stock value has dropped more than 12 percent since the start of the unrest.

Ein Ort bei Heidelberg hat den ersten schwarzen Bürgermeister Baden-Württembergs gewählt. John Ehret war schon als Kind ein Star in der Gemeinde Mauer, arbeitete später beim BKA. Seine Hautfarbe war nie ein Problem, sagt er. Heute tritt der 40-Jährige sein Amt an.

von Jan Söfjer (spiegel online) (gekürzt)

John Ehret hat kaum Wahlkampf gemacht. Er hat keine Plakate aufgehängt, keine Hochglanz-Broschüren in die Briefkästen geworfen, keine Klinken geputzt und erst als letzter von fünf Bewerbern seine Kandidatur bekannt gegeben. Trotzdem holte er in der Stichwahl 58,1 der Stimmen. Das früher so konservative Baden-Württemberg hat nun nicht nur einen grünen Ministerpräsidenten, sondern auch einen schwarzen Bürgermeister – den ersten im Bundesland. Diesen Freitag tritt er in der 4000-Seelen-Gemeinde Mauer bei Heidelberg seinen Dienst an.

John Ehret ist einerseits ein “Bub aus Mauer”, wie kein Zweiter. Und doch ist der 40-Jährige auch ganz anders. Sein leiblicher Vater war als US-Soldat in Karlsruhe stationiert, ein Schwarzer. Mehr weiß Ehret über ihn nicht. Seine Mutter war gebürtige Deutsche. Sie erkrankte an einem Hirntumor, wie man ihm später sagte, und gab ihren Sohn mit zwei Jahren in ein Heim.
John Ehret hatte keine guten Startchancen im Leben. Dass er sie doch bekam, verdankt er der Familie Ehret aus Mauer, die ihn mit sechs Jahren adoptierte und ihm ein bürgerliches Zuhause gab. Der kleine John war der Star im Ort, der einzige Schwarze. Im Fußballverein nannten sie ihn Pelé. Sein neuer Vater war als Gemeinderat der SPD ein angesehener Mann in Mauer – einem Ort, der keine nennenswerten sozialen Probleme kannte. Nie, so sagt John Ehret, hatte er Probleme wegen seiner Hautfarbe, oft wurde sie nicht einmal richtig bemerkt. (Veräter anmerk. d. red)
Kommissar Ehret im Auslandseinsatz

Beim Bundeskriminalamt, bei dem er eine Ausbildung zum Kommissar und Diplom-Verwaltungswirt machte, schickten ihn seine Vorgesetzten einmal sogar als Beobachter zu einem Neonazi-Konzert und bedachten offenbar nicht, dass seine Hautfarbe ein Problem sein könnte. Fast 20 Jahre war er beim BKA (als erster Schwarzer natürlich), zuletzt in der Abteilung für politisch motivierte Ausländerkriminalität.
Mehrmals war er in Auslandseinsätzen: im Auftrag der Vereinten Nationen als Ermittler von Anschlägen im Libanon, als Mentor in Sarajevo für den Aufbau der Finanzermittlungsbehörde und als Berater für den Neuaufbau der Polizei in Afghanistan. Von BKA-Chef Ziercke erhielt er dafür die Afghanistan-Spange.
John Ehret ist ein Mann, der viel gesehen hat. Trotzdem oder vielleicht gerade deshalb war er seinem Heimatörtchen immer sehr verbunden. “Als ich sah, dass ein neuer Bürgermeister gesucht wurde, weil der alte ein Amt in einer Nachbarstadt annahm, zögerte ich nicht lange.” Doch Ehret “wollte sich nicht aufdrängen”, wie er sagt. Er ließ nur Flyer drucken und ging zur Kandidatenvorstellung in die örtliche Turnhalle.

Plötzlich ein VorbildEhret sagt, mit dem Obama-Slogan habe er nur ausdrücken wollen, dass er gemeinsam mit den Bürgern die politische Zukunft gestalten wolle.

Am Wahlabend des 6. Mai versammelten sich 400 Menschen vor dem Rathaus in Mauer. Um 18.45 Uhr nahm der Gemeinderat und stellvertretende Bürgermeister Joachim Frühauf das Mikrofon in die Hand, verkündete erst das Wahlergebnis und dann den Sieger. Beifall, Jubel, Freudentränen. Ehret umarmte seine Frau. “Egal ob ihr mich beim Bäcker, beim Einkaufen oder beim Spazierengehen trefft, bitte erzählt mir, wo der Schuh drückt”, sagte Ehret auf der Bühne. Doch zunächst will er in seine Aufgaben hineinwachsen.

Und dann ist da auch noch die andere Sache. Plötzlich ist er, der nie gegen Diskriminierung kämpfen musste, ein Vorbild für schwarze Menschen in Deutschland, jemand, der zeigt, was möglich, ja normal geworden ist im Land. Vorkämpfer für die Sache der Schwarzen in Deutschland möchte er dann aber doch nicht sein, sagt er. “Dafür fühle ich mich zu deutsch.”

The largest and most sensitive gamma-ray telescope in the world is at present being built 100 km west of Windhoek in the Khomas Highland of Namibia, an area well-known for its excellent optical quality. Construction on the foundations started in August 2000, and the high energy stereoscopic system telescope (HESS) should be fully operational in 2002.
from News@NRF

Professor Christo Raubenheimer of the Potchefstroom University is the driving force behind the building of the telescope in southern Africa. The HESS project is the result of international cooperation between 12 institutes, including the Unit for Space Physics at Potchefstroom. The Unit was allocated an annual amount of R240 000 per year for 10 years from the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, administered by the NRF, for the project. The University of Namibia is the only other African institution involved in HESS, while the other collaborators are from Germany, France, Italy, Armenia, Ireland, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom.

Two unique features of the proposed installation are the possibility of simultaneously observing air showers with the aid of three to four telescopes under widely different viewing angles; and the combination of multiple (up to 16) telescopes in a large system to increase the effective detection area for gamma rays. The first four telescopes (phase I of the HESS project) are expected to go into operation in 2001 and 2002. HESS will supplement the facilities of the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) that is being constructed in the Northern Cape. Local astronomers and those from abroad should benefit from the excellent facilities available in southern Africa once these telescopes have been completed.

John Evans Fifii Atta Mills (21 July 1944 – 24 July 2012) the former Ghanaian politician who was President of Ghana from 2009 until his death in 2012. He was inaugurated on 7 January 2009, having defeated the ruling party candidate Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2008 election.He was Vice-President from 1997 to 2001 under President Jerry Rawlings, and stood unsuccessfully in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections as the candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). He died  24 July 2012 at the 37 Military Hospital in Accra. He is the first Ghanaian head of state to die in office.

Ghanaian President John Atta Mills was said to spread the wealth from Ghana’s newly discovered offshore oil fields, but his death came before the 68-year-old could finish his first term in this West African nation still held up as a model of democracy.

Ghanaian state-run television stations broke into their regular programming to announce the president’s death. Chief of Staff John Henry Martey Newman informed the nation about his death at a military hospital in the capital. The 37 Military Hospital was initially built during the second world war. The hospital mainly provided healthcare to the military. It has recently had a big expansion and caters for all kinds of cases. It now caters for the general public as well. No details were provided about the cause of death, but some news accounts said he had throat cancer. Vice President John Mahama was sworn in Tuesday to complete the last 5months of Mr. Mills’s term.

Chris Fomunyoh, the senior director for Africa for the Washington-based National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, said that Ghana’s democracy could weather the death of a president.

In other nations in West Africa, the death of a ruler usually spells a coup, as it did in Guinea after the 2008 death of longtime dictator Lansana Conte, and Togo, where the military seized power after the president’s death in 2005 to install his son.

Ghana, whose economy has been fueled by gold, cocoa and timber exports in the past, hopes to put its oil money to good use, mindful of how nearby Nigeria suffered through military dictatorships and widespread corruption over its oil wealth.

Mr. Mills even put up campaign posters of himself standing next to a cutout of Barack Obama in an effort to emphasize that he, too, stood for change.

In March, Mr. Mills traveled to the United States, where he met with President Obama. The Ghanaian leader also traveled to the United States in April as well, as rumors about his health began to circulate in Ghana. Opposition newspapers had recently reported that he was not well enough to run for a second term.

Mr. Mills also served as vice president under Jerry Rawlings, a coup leader who was later elected president by popular vote and surprised the world by stepping down after losing the 2000 election.

John Evans Atta Mills was born July 21, 1944, in Tarkwa, Ghana. He spent much of his career teaching at the University of Ghana. He earned a doctorate from London’s School of Oriental and African Studies before becoming a Fulbright scholar at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

Survivors include his wife, the former Ernestina Naadu, and a son.