Zimbabwe’s Electoral Commission has put too few polling stations in the cities, where the opposition has strongest support, an independent election monitoring group said on Tuesday. The group said Harare had 379 polling stations for about 760 000 registered voters — or 22 seconds for each vote if there was maximum turnout.
Siyabonga Nqakula, the son of the Minister of Safety and Security, should be convicted on charges of drunken driving and reckless or negligent driving, the state told the Cape Town magistrate’s court on Tuesday. Titi Mthimunye recounted the testimony of four state witnesses that Nqakula had smelled of liquor and that he had been unsteady on his feet.
Russian energy exports are close to reaching a milestone -billion per day value mark bringing in more money for social spending and creating additional inflationary pressure, a report said on Tuesday. Russian brokerage UralSib said in written research high earnings may also prompt the government to alleviate the tax burden on the oil sector
She doesn’t court publicity. She doesn’t flaunt her wealth. She has given millions to charity. JK Rowling has been a model of restraint. In little more than a decade since the first Harry Potter book was published, she has barely put a foot wrong in making the transition from single mother to one of the UK’s richest people.
A Finnish library-goer apparently thought ”better late than never” and quietly returned a book on loan for more than 100 years to a library in Vantaa, Finland. The library had lost track of the loan but welcomed back to its collections the copy of a 1902 volume of Vartija, a religious monthly periodical.
An extinct population of small-bodied humans has been found on the Palau group of islands in the Pacific Ocean, a University of the Witwatersrand researcher said on Tuesday. Palaeoanthropologist professor Lee Berger discovered the fossils while vacationing in Palau in 2006. ”We were on a kayak excursion when a guide asked me if I wanted to see a cave with some old bones.”
Oil prices struck a record high of $109,72 per barrel on Tuesday after the dollar hit a fresh all-time low against the euro and amid persistent energy-supply concerns, traders said. New York’s main oil contract, light sweet crude for delivery in April, soared to the historic level, beating the previous peak of $108,21, which was set on Monday.
There has been substantial progress in basic service delivery in the country, Statistics South Africa said on Tuesday. It released the municipal data of its 2007 Community Survey, which gives a breakdown of basic service delivery in each of the 283 municipalities in the country.
Civil engineering and construction group Stefanutti and Bressan on Tuesday announced a R1,1-billion merger with international construction group Stocks Limited. The merger would position the new group as a major competitor in the first-tier construction sector with turnover of almost R5-billion, Stefanutti and Bressan said in a statement.
Zimbabwe’s government on Tuesday sought to allay fears over a new equity law to give locals a controlling share in business ownership, saying it would not lead to expropriation of foreign-owned firms. "This is not going to be expropriation," Indigenisation and Empowerment Minister Paul Mangwana told a news conference.