Mandela's condition 'deteriorates' |
Anti-apartheid icon's health is reported to have worsened in last 36 hours, as President Zuma cancels foreign trip.
Last Modified: 27 Jun 2013 09:15
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Former South African president Nelson Mandela's health has "deteriorated" in the last 36 hours, Al Jazeera has learned.
The South African President Jacob Zuma had earlier visited Mandela on Wednesday night and reported that the hospitalised anti-apartheid icon was still in "critical condition."
Zuma said he was cancelling a planned daytrip on Thursday to Mozambique, where he was to attend a regional summit.
The president "was briefed by the doctors who are still doing everything they can to ensure his well-being," a government spokesman said.
Mac Maharaj, the presidential spokesman, declined to comment on media reports that Mandela was on life support systems in the Pretoria hospital where he was taken on June 8.
EUROPEAN UNION
EU summit focuses on crisis' social effects
Differing views on coping with youth unemployment are set to divide EU leaders at a two-day summit in Brussels. Finance ministers, however, agreed on who will have to pay first when it comes to future bank bailouts.
The financial crisis in the EU has subsided and talks about a country leaving the eurozone have stopped. But the recession still has a hold on the union and influences the employment numbers: 26 million Europeans are unemployed and a record 6 million of them are young people.
That's led EU member states' heads of state and government will convene in Brussels on Thursday (27.06.2013). Before the summit, the President of the EU Commission José Manuel Barroso called on the national leaders to address the social crisis created by struggling economies.
Moscow Phantom: Where In the World Is Edward Snowden?
Edward Snowden has reportedly been inside the transit terminal of a Moscow airport for days now, but there is no evidence to prove it. As his absence sparks new conspiracy theories, the Kremlin is capitalizing on the case.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has goaded reporters once again. Yes, Edward Snowden is in Moscow, he told them on Tuesday night during a state visit to Finland. And yes, the fugitive whistleblower from the United States remains in the transit area of the Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport.
Snowden is a "free man," said Putin, sparking yet another frenzy among journalists in Moscow, who have been scrambling to find Snowden since Sunday. The reporters combed over the bars and fast-food restaurants in the transit zone again, not to mention the benches that stranded passengers stretch out on to rest. They also searched the terminal's "capsule hotel," called V-Express, where Snowden had allegedly checked in.
China eases curbs on Dalai Lama images
June 27, 2013 - 5:27PM
The Chinese government loosened restrictions that kept Tibetan monks in two provinces from openly revering the Dalai Lama, the exiled Buddhist spiritual leader, Radio Free Asia reported.
Authorities in Sichuan province announced people can display pictures of the Dalai Lama and ordered officials not to criticise him, the U.S.-funded RFA reported, citing a resident in Sichuan's Ganzi prefecture it didn't identify. In the past, monks had to keep pictures of the Dalai Lama hidden.
China took control of Tibet in 1951 and has vilified the Dalai Lama, 77, as a separatist since he fled to India in 1959, where he leads a government in exile. Chinese officials regularly levy diplomatic sanctions on countries that host him for visits, including the UK.
How to oust a president (again), Egyptian-style
After 18 days of mass protests in 2011, Egyptians succeeded in ousting a president they were unhappy with. Can they do it again this weekend?
Hearing their bright-eyed talk around a café table of a peaceful new Egyptian revolution, you might dismiss Mahmoud Badr and the other young instigators of a petition asking for a new president as hopeless dreamers.
Except they managed it once before – Cairo twentysomethings just like these, in their deck shoes and Tommy Hilfiger T-shirts, checking iPads and puffing on low-tar Marlboros over Turkish coffee, a few blocks from Tahrir Square.
In 2011 this generation, armed with Facebook, brought out Egyptians of all ages and backgrounds in protest and, to the world's amazement, toppled the "Pharaoh" Hosni Mubarak.
Brazil protesters: Is common ground really necessary?
The bus fare hikes that sparked widespread Brazilian protests have been reversed, but protests continue. Can they last?
When Gilmar Lopes marched from the favela Rocinha to the Rio de Janeiro governor’s house last night with a thousand of his neighbors, his demand was a very local one: Basic sanitation in the low-income community where he lives.
Mr. Lopes’s call was one in a sea of diverse demands: clean up the polluted Rio beaches, improve public daycare facilities, raise teacher salaries, and stop police brutality.
In the past two weeks Brazil has seen its biggest demonstrations in two decades, which were sparked by a rise in bus fares. Local governments quickly reversed the increases as protests gained momentum. But transportation costs were just the final straw for many Brazilians, and the protesters’ voices have since grown louder, but also more fractured.
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