Yves Rossy, the so-called Jet Man, was aiming to cross from Africa to Europe with the jet-propelled wing strapped to his back.

But about 15 minutes after he took off from above Tangier in Morocco, organisers wrote on the micro-blogging website Twitter: "He may be in the sea. We have search and rescue team in place."

TV and internet viewers saw Rossy alive in the sea after his landing.

Clothed in a flame-retardant ( Read more... )
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President Robert Mugabe pulled the nation out of the Commonwealth, which he denounced as an "evil organisation", in 2003.

But Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai supports a return, and Britain believes the troubled nation can be brought back into the mainstream world community.

The meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government, which opens in Trinidad on Friday, will send a message to Zimbabwe's leaders that a place at the table could be possible at the next gathering in late 2011. ( Read more... )
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Scores of women were raped, children were killed and young girls marched away to become sex slaves. When it was all over, one of the two suspects, Germain Katanga, was allegedly heard to boast: "Nothing was spared. Absolutely nothing. Chickens, goats, everything... was wiped out."

Mr Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui were in the dock yesterday in The Hague ? in only the second trial to get under way at the permanent ICC (as distinct from the temporary courts judging war crimes in the Balkans ( Read more... )
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A summit of Commonwealth heads of government in Trinidad and Tobago will add the central African nation to its 53 current members, despite its failure to meet entry requirements. "There is consensus on Rwanda" a senior African negotiator told The Independent.

The decision, expected before the week's end, has been greeted with dismay by NGOs, while the author of a major report on Rwanda's candidacy said it was clear evidence that the Commonwealth "could not care less about human rights". ( Read more... )
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"A major pipeline which delivers crude oil to the Brass export terminal was blown up at the Nembe creek in Bayelsa state this morning," the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said in a statement emailed to media.

There was no immediate confirmation from the military or from Agip.

MEND, which said its fighters had clashed with a military gunboat during the attack, has threatened to widen its campaign to offshore facilities ( Read more... )
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Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?", written in haste by Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats and Midge Ure of Ultravox, was unprecedented. Shocked by the BBC newsreader Michael Buerk's report of the famine in Ethiopia, which claimed a million lives, and the distressing footage of children with distended stomachs in a bleak African landscape, Geldof and Ure strong-armed some of the biggest names of the 1980s music scene into making the charity record.

Geldof, whose own career was on the ( Read more... )
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Paul and Rachel Chandler, from Tunbridge Wells in Kent, were filmed on Wednesday by a Channel 4 News camera crew; the two-minute video was broadcast yesterday evening.

Talking directly to the camera and standing in front of numerous gunmen brandishing loaded weapons, the pair made a direct appeal to the British Government. Mr Chandler, 59, says: "The kidnappers are losing patience; they are concerned that there has been no response at all to their demands for money." ( Read more... )
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While Irish and French politicians have traded words over their sides' controversial encounter in Paris, Egypt has recalled its ambassador from Algiers. As if that weren't enough, the Egyptian football association has threatened to quit international football for two years in protest at the behaviour of Algerian fans and players.

Crowds approached Algeria's embassy in Cairo at dawn yesterday ? a rare public demonstration in the city that ended with 11 police officers and 24 demonstrators ( Read more... )
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This morning, a new generation of activists will gather at the same venue, in Kensington, west London, to highlight the continued suffering in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. The demonstration will attempt to redraw a link, established forcefully in 1909, between the actions of the rich world and the fate of millions of people in a distant stretch of central Africa.

As the Archbishop argued a century ago: "We know, that, in whatever way it has come about, a great wrong has ( Read more... )
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"The captain of the chemical tanker died last night from gunshot wounds he got during the hijack," a pirate who gave his name as Mohamed told Reuters. "The ship is headed for Haradheere with the dead captain."

The MV Theresa VIII was seized on Monday with its 28 North Korean crew members.

The European Union naval force EU Navfor force operating in the area said yesterday that pirates had seized the 22,294 DWT tanker 180 miles northwest of the Seychelles. ( Read more... )
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Tonight the two sides meet again for the same prize after a sequence of results that would make an atheist question the notion of free will. At stake is a place in next year's World Cup, no small amount of pride and the terms of a million arguments that will rage in North Africa long after the final whistle is blown.

The footballing giants of the Maghreb both have points to prove. Algeria have not taken part in the finals since 1986 and Egypt, for all their dominance ( Read more... )
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While most African leaders shy away from criticising each other, the telecoms billionaire, born in Sudan, has used his fortune to puncture this cosy consensus. "Something is drastically wrong. I think we have the right to ask our leaders: are they really serious?" he told a conference on good governance in Tanzania. "Who are we to think that we can have 53 tiny little countries and be ready to compete with China, India, Europe, the Americans? It is a fallacy."

Addressing ( Read more... )
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Edwin Komakech spoke on Saturday at a security meeting in the Amuru district about 217 miles north of Uganda's capital, Kampala. Some who make the local gin, called waragi, have begun distilling it with poisonous methanol.

More than 50 people have died in the last two months in Uganda from drinking the poisonous gin.

In Uganda, the bodies of those who commit suicide are also caned as a form of dishonour and to warn against such behaviour for the ( Read more... )
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Officials who regulate the domestic ivory trade in China said that there hasn't been a conspicuous increase in ivory consumption as tight laws and controls restrict ivory sales and manufacturing to some 130 addresses nationwide. Yet this year alone, an extra 37 stores were approved as new, and official, ivory retail outlets.

There have also been tell-tale signs on the ground. In Guangzhou's antiques market, numerous stalls were openly selling uncertified ivory, from trinkets to large carved ( Read more... )
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The winters where she lives, 200 miles north-west of Mogadishu, used to be "very hot during the day and cold at night", she adds. But now "we have to sleep outside at night, it is so hot".

Somalia's harvest, brought in last month, is almost 30 per cent lower than normal, the result of the worst drought in at least 40 years. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation says that the situation is "alarming", with a "severe food crisis", affecting 1.8 million people, persisting throughout the ( Read more... )
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Bobby Godsell, the chairman of Eskom, which generates 95 per cent of electricity in sub-Saharan Africa's biggest economy, resigned this week after being accused of trying to force out his black chief executive.

The power struggle comes as experts warn that South Africa faces another season of blackouts that have prompted national emergencies in the past two years. It also highlights the crisis of leadership in Jacob Zuma's new government, which is being accused of appeasing "racial populists" ( Read more... )
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After initial arguments, the trial was adjourned to tomorrow by High Court Judge Muchineripi Bhunu to allow time to consider applications made by the state and defence.

Bennett, whom Tsvangirai wants to bring into the government, was arrested in February and charged with illegally possessing arms to commit acts of terrorism, banditry and insurgency, charges that carry a possible death penalty.

The state brought several cases of ammunition and rifles to be presented as evidence into ( Read more... )
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Pirates in two skiffs fired at the Hong Kong-flagged BW Lion about 1,000 miles east of the Somali coast, the European Union Naval Force said.

The tanker's captain increased speed and took evasive maneuvers, avoiding the attack, the force said. No casualties were reported. The naval force sent a plane from the Seychelles islands to investigate.

Pirates have launched increasingly bold attacks against vessels in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden in hopes of capturing a ship and crew ( Read more... )
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The Egyptian Interior Ministry identified the attacker as Mahmoud Salah-Eddin Abdel-Raziq and said he suffered from "psychological disturbances".

Earlier, police said three men had been arrested in four simultaneous church assaults, one of them foiled by police. They said 17 people were wounded, and one later died.

The discrepancies between the reports could not be immediately explained. However, the government has always tried to downplay incidents that can be perceived ( Read more... )
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Dr Peter Sharrock, a senior teaching fellow in the art and archaeology of Southeast Asia at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, was at a conference in Cambodia in July when he decided to spend a day searching the forest around the ruins of Angkor.

His aim was to locate the missing giant legs of an eight-headed, three-metre high sandstone statue of Hevajra, the war-like, tantric Buddhist deity. The statue's intricately carved bust was excavated and salvaged in 1925 by French ( Read more... )
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