British Prime Minister Tony Blair wants China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa to join the G8 to secure multilateral deals on trade, climate change and Iran, The Guardian newspaper said on Thursday. The British premier reckoned that the first fruits of closer engagement could be a break of the logjam in the ailing Doha round of world trade talks.
Zimbabwean police arrested more than 200 activists in three cities on Wednesday as they marched to demand a new Constitution to replace one seen entrenching President Robert Mugabe’s rule, a lobby group said. The National Constitutional Assembly said about 1 060 people took to the streets at midday in the capital Harare as well as in Bulawayo, Mutare, Gweru and Masvingo.
South African mobile phone operator MTN has extended its offer for Investcom until further notice and said on Thursday 99,5% of Investcom’s shareholders had accepted the deal. MTN, Africa’s largest cellular operator, had previously said the second closing date of the offer to shareholders of Investcom LLC was July 12 2006.
While most other children were spending their time in school playgrounds, Redda Sarsawe was earning a living for his family by working as a carpenter. "I left school five years ago," says the 14-year-old from Hagar Aswad, an impoverished suburb south of Damascus. "My parents didn’t give me any money for books, so I started working."
Violence will not stop the minibus taxi recapitalisation programme, the Department of Transport said on Thursday. ”No amount of threats and thuggery by a tiny group will influence our determination to proceed with the implementation of our policies and programmes,” spokesperson Collen Msibi said in a statement on Thursday.
Jewish bodies on Thursday hit back at the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) following its call for boycotts against Israel. The union federation also denounced Israel’s military incursions into Gaza. Israeli jets bombed the Palestinian foreign ministry in Gaza and Beirut’s international airport on Thursday.
The European Commission slapped Microsoft on Wednesday with a new fine of €280,5-million for failing to fully respect a 2004 antitrust ruling, but the software giant vowed to appeal. Raising the pressure on Microsoft, the European Union competition watchdog also threatened additional fines of €3-million ($3,82-million) a day from the end of the month if the company continued to defy the ruling.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday blamed Lebanon for the capture of two soldiers by the Hezbollah militia, branding the attack an "act of war" and threatening a "painful" response. He ruled out any negotiations with Hezbollah in a bid to free the servicemen, snatched on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
The entourage of Nigerian Vice-President Abubakar Atiku has alleged there is a plot to bar him from contesting next year’s presidential election by trying to implicate him in a corruption probe involving a prominent telecoms businessman who is being investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
Liberia will not be seeking fresh aid from donors at a conference it is hosting but ideas on how to hasten its post-war reconstruction, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said on Wednesday. ”We are not going to ask for pledges,” Johnson-Sirleaf told delegates from major international financial organisations in the capital, Monrovia.