An alleged kingpin in the Fidentia asset management scandal, Steven Goodwin, launched an urgent application in the Pretoria High Court on Tuesday to secure his freedom. He asked the court to set aside and declare unconstitutional a request by the Director General of Justice to United States authorities for his provisional arrest.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Tuesday appealed to governments to do more to save Africa from disease. ”We cannot lose Africa,” Tutu told the 193-nation World Health Assembly. ”The cradle of humankind” is threatened by ”disease, conflict and destruction”.
The AfriForum group on Tuesday laid wreaths in Pretoria for the victims of the Church Street bomb blast during the apartheid era. ”The fact that the majority of the victims had been civilians means that the incident cannot be regarded as a military operation, but rather as an act of terror,” said AfriForum.
Global price rises and floods last year have caused severe food shortages in north-east Uganda, where nearly 30 people have died and some have been reduced to eating rats. The deaths occurred in the remote Karamoja region, an impoverished area that is notorious for fighting over livestock and scant resources.
Parliament would undermine its own integrity if it failed to pursue the MPs who owed money in the Travelgate saga, the Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) said on Tuesday. PSAM was reacting to an announcement that creditors of one of the travel agencies linked were to be asked to stop all civil action.
As police announced the launch of "specialised units" to combat the deadly xenophobic violence in Gauteng and the National Intelligence Agency confirmed that it was probing the violence, the government on Tuesday stood accused of serious policy failures that "created a tinderbox of unmet expectations which exploded in Alexandra".
South Africa has emerged at a ranking of 116 in the Global Peace Index 2008, the index said on Tuesday. ”South Africa has moved down six places since 2007,” it said in a statement. The index is a ranking of 140 countries — from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe — listed according to their peacefulness.
Newcastle United midfielder Joey Barton was jailed on Tuesday for six months after admitting to beating up a teenager during a night out. The sentence was handed down at Liverpool Crown Court, where the 25-year-old admitted charges of affray and assault occasioning actual bodily harm, stemming from an early morning fight in Liverpool in December.
The prices of staple foods such as rice could stay high for the next three years, hindering the battle against poverty, a top World Bank official said on Tuesday. Food prices had risen at a ”startling” speed, giving governments and communities little time to respond, the bank’s managing director, Juan Jose Daboub, said.
A severe drought in Ethiopia threatens up to six million children, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) warned on Tuesday. "Up to six million children under five years of age are living in impoverished, drought-prone districts and require continuation of urgent preventative health and nutrition interventions," Unicef said in a statement.