Zimbabwean farmer Irvin Reid arrived in Nigeria almost five years ago, he was given a set of grid references in the remote bush and told to find water and build a new farm. His dairy farm now has 300 Jersey cows, some of among 800 imported from South Africa to start cattle farms in the region. It’s a sharp contrast to things back in Zimbabwe, where campaigners say farmers face their worst year ever. Reid was one of 13 white farmers invited with their families to Nigeria in 2005 after land seizures in Zimbabwe — which President Robert Mugabe says are necessary to correct the legacy of colonialism — stripped them of their livelihoods.  Comment

New species of giant ancient crocodiles, one with boar-like tusks another with a duck-like snout, have been unearthed in the Sahara desert, experts announced today. Palaeontologists say that the diverse array of fossils offers important clues to why the ancestors of modern crocodiles survived while dinosaurs underwent mass extinction. The expedition that begun in 2000 found specimens of three new species, nicknamed BoarCroc, RatCroc and PancakeCroc. Many of the fossils were found lying on the surface of a remote, windswept stretch of rock and dunes.  Comment

Seven Papua New Guinean men have been rescued after spending more than two months adrift in the Pacific Ocean after their boat ran out of fuel. The group was spotted drifting near the island of Nauru by a helicopter belonging to US fishing vessel Ocean Encounter on Sunday. Seven men were onboard and told Ocean Encounter captain Ben Maughan they left Tabar Island in the New Ireland area of Papua New Guinea on September 14 to return home to Lihir Island, a distance of about 30 miles.  Comment

This week has seen a rush of key policymakers and business executives from Africa flocking to London. Apart from Sierra Leone, oil and gas executives have been discussing the outlook for Equatorial Guinea, a small central African state rich in oil. Equatorial Guinea made a relatively rare foray into the global news earlier this month for a presidential pardon of former British army officer Simon Mann, who was serving a 34-year prison sentence in the country for his role in a failed coup d’etat in 2004.  Comment

A gang in the remote Peruvian jungle has been killing people for their fat, police charged Thursday, draining it from their corpses and offering it on the black market for use in cosmetics. Medical experts expressed skepticism that a major market for fat might exist. Three suspects have confessed to killing five people for their fat, said Col. Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru's anti-kidnapping police. He said the suspects, two of whom were arrested carrying bottles of liquid fat, told police it was worth $60,000 a gallon ($15,000 a liter).  Comment

A 33 year-old morbidly obese man with no health coverage was returned untreated to a recliner in his home in March after a knee injury. Daniel Webb became unable to walk or leave his home after the injury, for which he was unable to receive treatment. Webb’s wife Ada tried to no avail to obtain disability and medical coverage for her husband, who remained in the chair for nearly nine months, covered in sores and human excrement.  Comment

In 2007, Jason Rodriguez was fired from his position at an Orlando, Florida engineering firm and ended up taking a job as a "sandwich artist" at a Subway restaurant. His salary was cut nearly in half and his debts mounted until, last May, he filed for bankruptcy, listing his assets at just over $4,600 and his liabilities at nearly $90,000. Although he lived only 30 minutes away, according to his former mother-in-law, America Holloway, Rodriguez barely saw his son. When the boy asked why his father didn't visit, Holloway said Rodriguez told him: "'Because I don't have any money. I don't have a job. I don't have anything to eat. When things get better, I'll come see you.'"  Comment

In California, college tuition hikes of 32% sparked student protests and over 50 arrests. University of California students at the Davis campus protested the hikes, claiming that the steep rise in tuition would prevent working and middle class students from completing their education. Police were called when students refused to leave the area near the Mrak administrative building.  Comment

Pictures of missing people have been hanging for years next to the gate to the fence surrounding Kosovo’s parliament. Some of them have been there for so long that the features of the faces can hardly be seen anymore - a good example of how slow and painful the process of discovering the fate of the missing is. Ten years after the end of the war here there are still more than 1,000 people from Kosovo in the list of missing persons kept by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). But, despite limited capacity and infrastructure, people at the department of forensic investigations in Pristina keep searching for the missing.  Comment

Faced with errands for unrelated items – body lotion, slippers, yogurt – I decided that today I needed some one-stop shopping. Visiting individual shops and bargaining down the price of each item would take me an afternoon. So where do you head for one-stop shopping in Kunming, China? Wal-mart, of course.  Comment

Model Daul Kim, 20, who had worked for Chanel among others, was found hanged yesterday. Police think it was suicide. If so, she is the ninth Korean celebrity to take her own life in just over a year.n an Oct. 30 entry on her blog, Kim wrote she was "mad depressed and overworked," and in another entry said "the more i gain the more lonely it is ... i know i'm like a ghost." The last entry on her blog, dated Nov. 18, was titled "say hi to forever" and carried a video of the song "I Go Deep" by British singer Jim Rivers.  Comment

When the former Khmer Rouge prison chief, Kaing Ghek Eav, first took the stand eight months ago, most Cambodians had scarce knowledge of the tribunal that was trying him. The notorious man — known best by his revolutionary name, Duch — stands accused of crimes against humanity for the medieval torture of 14,000 people at a secret prison code-named S-21 during the Khmer Rouge's reign from 1975 to 1979.  Comment

ustralian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd voiced "concerns" about the Church of Scientology Wednesday after a senator detailed explosive allegations including torture, imprisonment and coerced abortions. Rudd said the accusations, made by independent Senator Nick Xenophon in parliament but strenuously denied by the organisation, were "grave" and needed further consideration.  Comment

Chief of Surgery Leo Donnan: “To see them as separate human beings is a pretty amazing moment” A 25-hour operation to separate conjoined twins has been successful, say doctors in Australia. Bangladeshi twins Trishna and Krishna, who are nearly three years old, were joined at the top of the head. A 16-strong team began the delicate operation separating the girls' brain tissue at 2300GMT on Sunday. On Tuesday, Chief of Surgery Leo Donnan said both girls are “doing well” following the surgery at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. ‘Surreal’ Neurosurgeons divided the children’s brains at approximately 1100 local time (0000GMT).  2 Comments

When John Hennessey was 10 years old, he was sent from a war-weary Britain to an orphanage in Australia, where he was told food was plentiful and children rode kangaroos to school. Instead, he was beaten and sexually abused, leaving him emotionally scarred and with a stutter that persists 60 years later. "There's no other country in the world that has deported their children to the other side of the world and then abandoned them," the 72-year-old said before an emotional ceremony Monday in Australia, where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized for his country's role in a shameful episode in British colonial history.  1 Comment

The now very-well-known tourist board campaign which recruited Ben Southall for the Best Job in the World—experiencing and blogging about life on the paradise of Hamilton Island in Queensland, Australia—apparently earned the state about $360 million worth of publicity (not bad for a $2.2 million outlay). Now that everyone knows that Queensland is a great place to go thanks to Ben's twitter pictures and blogs, there's one big problem: nobody's going.  Comment

The average fast food fan will scoff a takeaway meal at least 25 times a year - spending £13.03 on each occasion, it has been found.

 This adds up to an annual bill of £325.75 - or a massive £15,310,250,000 across the 47 million adults in the UK.

 And this is despite a reported 43 per cent cutting back on the number of takeaways they consume during the credit crunch.
 A study of 2,000 families found that Chinese is now the nation's favourite takeaway, followed by Indian and a pizza.  1 Comment

As many a hostess may know, using a ladle to dish up the last few spoonfuls of a casserole from a large pot can leave you in a bit of a stew. The scraping noises from the round-bottomed utensil rubbing against the bottom of the serving dish does nothing to enhance a dinner party's ambience, while tilting the pot to fish out those remaining juicy morsels looks rather inelegant.  Comment

The diplomatic incident, which occurred amid mounting tensions in the sea around the British colony, was triggered when the crew of a Civil Guard vessel reported spotting the fast patrol boat Scimitar firing at the "Spanish colours" during a military exercise in international waters. Giles Paxman, 58, the younger brother of the BBC broadcaster Jeremy Paxman, was summoned to Spain's foreign ministry less than a month after taking up his new post as British Ambassador.  1 Comment

A Brazilian transsexual prostitute named Brenda who was involved in a scandal last month that led to the resignation of Piero Marrazzo, the senior figure in the leftist opposition party of Italy and the regional president of Rome, was found dead this morning in her apartment. She was charred to death in a fire put out by firefighters. She was found semi-naked, with half a bottle of whisky by her side and two suitcases by the door - as if she had been ready to leave.  Comment

The ancient hymns brought tears to the eyes of Solomon Ayeli, as well as memories of his native Ethiopia which he left two decades ago for Israel a country he loves but where he often feels rejected. "There should be no differences between black Jews and white Jews," said Ayeli, 29, who was among 15,000 people who this week celebrated the Ethiopian-Jewish Sigd prostration festival in Jerusalem.  Comment

A Vatican scholar claims to have deciphered the "death certificate" imprinted on the Shroud of Turin, or Holy Shroud, a linen cloth revered by Christians and held by many to bear the image of the crucified Jesus. Dr Barbara Frale, a researcher in the Vatican secret archives, said "I think I have managed to read the burial certificate of Jesus the Nazarene, or Jesus of Nazareth." She said that she had reconstructed it from fragments of Greek, Hebrew and Latin writing imprinted on the cloth together with the image of the crucified man.  Comment

Last night's Frontline examined the life and death of Neda Agha-Soltan, revealing Neda's commitment to protesting and the Iranian government's persecution of her friends and family. One fascinating aspect of the segment is a discussion of the role of women in the summer election protests. Echoing the words of an anonymous Iranian journalist who wrote for The New Yorker in September, another journalist identified as Faranak says she at first assumed that women could protest more freely because the police would be reluctant to harm them.  Comment

Eight years after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, many Afghan women continue to live in repressive and often abusive environments. To escape, many women turn to suicide, while others choose self-immolation as a means to escape family problems. A video released by Reuters features a hospital in Herat province that specializes in treating women who burn themselves. "I burnt myself because my in-laws were torturing me," says a young girl in the video. "They were beating me all the time. ....  Comment