Iran will ignore any United Nations Security Council demands to halt its disputed nuclear programme, hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed on Wednesday. ”We won’t back down one iota on our lawful and inalienable rights,” the president was quoted as saying by the official news agency Irna.
Billboards dotting New Delhi are exhorting city residents to imagine a future made up of tall buildings and sky trains that will take the Indian capital from ”walled city to world city”. The phrase ”world-class city” is increasingly on the lips of city officials too, on a massive drive to tidy the capital in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games in 2010.
The council of the University of the Free State (UFS), which after eleven years of democracy still practises segregation in its student hostels, said the name change of a hostel for white men, named ”Verwoerd”, is a priority and will be finalised in June. The Mail & Guardian on February 17 reported that the university’s student hostels were still racially segregated.
The retail price of all grades of petrol will be increased by 39 cents per litre (c/l) on Wednesday May 3, the Department of Minerals and Energy said on Wednesday. The latest changes bring the retail price of a litre of 95-octane unleaded petrol in Gauteng to R6,12 a litre and to R5,88 a litre at the coast.
There is a ”turf war for human subjects” as pharmaceutical clinical trials increased 16 times in low-income settings such as Africa, the Microbicides 2006 conference in Cape Town heard on Wednesday. This is according to Professor Ames Dhai, head of Bioethics at the University of the Witwatersrand Medical School.
Ethiopia on Wednesday dismissed rebel threats to foreign energy firms considering work in the country’s restive south-east, saying the area was stable with no risk to potential investment. The information ministry said the warning from the Ogaden National Liberation Front that natural gas exploration in the Ogaden region ”will not be tolerated” was hollow and nothing new.
Charges against three of the 11 accused of murdering actor Brett Goldin and designer Richard Bloom were withdrawn on Wednesday in the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court in Cape Town. State prosecutor Thinus Groenewald told a packed court that charges against Rameez Said, Travino Cairncross and Anushka Anthony were withdrawn in absentia, as some family members sobbed in relief.
An agreement was formally concluded between Telkom and the Communication Workers Union (CWU) earlier on Wednesday, ending the industrial dispute between the two parties with immediate effect. Members of CWU had been engaged in industrial action since April 18 and the company exercised its rights by responding with a lockout of bargaining unit CWU members.
China’s first face transplant recipient, a hunter who was badly mauled by a bear, is recovering faster than expected and has even managed to smile, state media said on Wednesday. The Xijing Hospital in the northwestern city of Xi’an said the physical and mental state of Li Guoxing (30) was "pretty good".
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Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser would not have had consensual sex with him without a condom, the Johannesburg High Court heard on Wednesday. State prosecutor Charin de Beer said the HIV-positive woman had been adamant in her testimony that she would have used a condom.