Tsunami warnings for New Zealand, Fiji and the rest of the Pacific have been cancelled following a massive 8,0 quake in Tonga, United States tsunami monitors said on Wednesday. There were few early reports of injury or damage in Tonga, although a hotel guest hurt his leg when he jumped from a third-floor window.
A huge earthquake with a magnitude of 8,0 on the Richter scale hit Pacific islands in the Tonga region early on Thursday, the United States Geological Survey reported. US authorities issued a tsunami warning for New Zealand and Fiji, officials said, and a tsunami watch for the rest of the Pacific.
The Department of Health has rejected a demand for the inclusion of the Aids Law Project in South Africa’s delegation to next month’s special United Nations session on HIV/Aids. The demand was made by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) as a precondition for its acceptance of its own inclusion on the list.
Parliament has rebuffed suggestions that National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete’s R471 900 trip to attend the inauguration of Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Monrovia in January was a ”joyride across Africa”. The Mail & Guardian reported on the expensive trip on Friday.
Former deputy president Jacob Zuma’s behaviour as a former leader of the government’s campaign against HIV/Aids as well as the moral regeneration movement ”is testimony to the sad state of leadership in South Africa today”, says Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon, who has also criticised the Koeberg ”sabotage” debacle.
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/ 7 February 2006
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and South African Communist Party in KwaZulu-Natal have warned of mass action against the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) in the next two weeks over its coverage of axed former deputy president Jacob Zuma, who goes on trial for rape on February 13.
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/ 24 January 2006
A tremor of a magnitude of 3,6 on the Richter scale was recorded in the East Rand, 8km north-west of Germiston, on Tuesday at 11.13am, said Ian Saunders, project leader for the South African National Seismograph Network at the Council for Geoscience in Pretoria. The tremor was felt in many parts of Johannesburg.
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/ 24 January 2006
The Nelson Mandela metropolitan council has dropped plans to rebury the remains of President Thabo Mbeki’s late father, Govan, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Tuesday. The municipality earlier announced plans to relocate his remains to the newly built Red Location Museum. However, the family objected.
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/ 20 January 2006
Most South Africans come from backgrounds that frown on homosexuality, says the African Christian Democratic Party. "That is a fact. We cannot support a situation where a minority is attempting to impose its will on the majority," the ACDP’s mayoral candidate for Cape Town, Pauline Cupido, said on Friday.
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/ 17 January 2006
The Presidency is to issue clarification on Tuesday on Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka’s controversial trip to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) over Christmas, media reports said. Presidency spokesperson Murphy Morobe promised late on Monday afternoon everything would be clearer on Tuesday.