Russia showed off on Tuesday the first modernised Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bomber, which a senior air force official said would help Moscow match the nuclear capability of a potential enemy. Russian television showed the giant, white-painted airplane releasing parachutes to slow down the speed as it landed at Engels airbase in the Volga region of Saratov.
Hovering above a pride of white lions in a hot air balloon was the defining moment of Briton Chris Sanger-Davies’s first trip to South Africa. ”You realise that you are flying over countryside that has the kind of wildlife in it, that if you landed there, you would be stuffed,” the pilot said as he attended the South African Hot Air Balloon Championships.
British actress Teresa Norton was arrested at Camps Bay beach for refusing to put her dog on a leash and to give her name and address to a law enforcement officer, the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court heard on Tuesday. Officer Willem Boonzaaier is charged before magistrate Alta Fredericks with assaulting Norton.
Teazers boss Emmanuel ”Lolly” Jackson and his manager appeared in court on Tuesday on charges of fraud and contravening immigration law, Johannesburg police said. Media reports said that 11 exotic dancers from Russia and the Ukraine were also being questioned.
United Nations agencies and the World Bank pledged on Tuesday to set up a task force to tackle an unprecedented rise in global food prices that is threatening to spread social unrest. The international bodies called on countries not to restrict exports of food to secure supplies at home.
France’s United Nations ambassador called on Zimbabwe authorities on Tuesday to publish and accept the results of elections there as the Security Council met for its first session on the Zimbabwe crisis. Diplomats have said South Africa, which currently holds the Security Council presidency, was reluctant to have it take up the issue of Zimbabwe.
Statistics South Africa should appear before the finance portfolio committee to explain alleged unreliability in the Producer Price Index (PPI), said the Democratic Alliance (DA) on Tuesday. ”Reliable official data is essential to policy-making,” said DA finance spokesperson Kobus Marais.
DNA tests showed that Austrian Josef Fritzl, who raped his daughter and kept her prisoner in a windowless cellar for 24 years, was the father of her six surviving children, police said on Tuesday. Fritzl has confessed to imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth in the cellar beneath their two-storey home and fathering seven children by her.
Darfur rebels accused the government on Tuesday of bombing areas under their control and said attacks this week showed Khartoum was not serious about seeking peace. But the army denied the accusations, which come during the visit of a Sudanese delegation to London to follow up on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s offer to host Darfur peace talks.
High food and fuel costs in South Africa have spilled over into second-round inflationary effects that have to be tackled, Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni said on Tuesday. He also, again, warned in an interview with CNBC Africa that an excessive increase in electricity prices will have serious consequences for inflation.