German prosecutors have not approached the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to help investigate possible kickbacks in a sale of four corvettes to the South African Navy. NPA spokesperson Makhosini Nkosi said on Monday the office had received no requests from the German authorities on the issue.
Three Palestinian militant groups holding a teenage Israeli soldier on Monday set Israel a one-day deadline to meet their demands to free Palestinian prisoners. ”Faced with the Zionist enemy’s persistence in taking military measures and aggressions, we give it a delay expiring Tuesday, July 4 at 6am,” said a statement issued by the Popular Resistance Committees.
The JSE was slightly firmer just after midday on Monday, benefiting from higher commodity prices. Volumes were extremely light, however, ahead of Tuesday’s Independence Day holiday in the US. By 12.15pm, the all-share index inched up 0,15%. Resources rose 0,21%, the gold-mining index gained 0,72% and the platinum-mining index perked up 1,26%.
The hard-line supreme leader of Somalia’s Islamic courts on Monday denied any affiliation with al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and said his group takes no orders from outsiders. Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys said Bin Laden’s weekend message to Somali Islamists "has nothing to do with us".
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, has been buried at a secret location in the country, thwarting calls for his body to be repatriated to Jordan. Iraq’s National Security Adviser, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, said on Sunday that al-Zarqawi’s body had been handed over by the United States military and buried in accordance with Muslim traditions.
Zimbabwe’s Parliament is to clamp down on Cabinet ministers not taking the legislature’s business seriously, Harare’s Herald newspaper reported on Monday. Its website said a parliamentary committee recommended on Sunday that the conduct of such ministers be brought to the attention of President Robert Mugabe.
A car bomb exploded in a market in the northern city of Mosul, Iraq, on Monday, killing at least seven people and wounding 28, officials said. The attack was aimed at a police patrol but missed its target and hit the market instead. At least seven civilians were killed and 28 were wounded, according to police.
Former president FW de Klerk was discharged from hospital on Monday morning following surgery to remove a malignant colon tumour and subsequent respiratory complications. With the aid of a cane, he walked out of the Panorama Medi-Clinic to a waiting car. De Klerk told journalists he was going to rest for a bit and then start working again.
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Portuguese winger Cristiano Ronaldo, criticised for his role in Wayne Rooney’s sending off at the World Cup, won’t be back at Manchester United and can expect payback from the star England striker in the future. Quoting an unnamed source, The Sun newspaper reported on Monday that Rooney threatened to ”split him in two” when the two next meet.
He is hardly an archetypal baby boomer. He wasn’t at Woodstock — he was too busy helping his father campaign for the Senate in Texas — and he certainly didn’t march against the Vietnam war, although exactly what he was doing at the time remains a matter of some intrigue.