South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has defended the high revenue overruns of the state saying it was natural in an environment of strong growth, high corporate profits and more money being about. He was present at the Finance Portfolio committee hearing on Tuesday with the South African Revenue Service — which has reported strong revenue growth for some years.
Heavily armed Somali fighters have occupied Mogadishu’s main hospital, forcing a near shutdown in key services to patients wounded in factional fighting that has rocked the city, witnesses said on Tuesday. Dozens of gunmen from a United States-backed warlord alliance took over the Keysaney Hospital in northern Mogadishu.
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Striker Michael Owen has been given the all-clear to play in the friendly against Hungary at Old Trafford on Tuesday after a new injury scare. Owen has only just fully recovered from breaking a bone in his foot on New Year’s Eve, but it was a ”tight thigh” after training on Monday that caused manager Sven Goran Eriksson to send him to hospital for a scan.
Only the Constitutional Court can help axed Cape Town municipal manager Wallace Mgoqi after his bid to appeal a high court decision against him was dismissed. The Cape High Court dismissed with costs Mgoqi’s appeal against a full-bench decision in May, setting aside a one-year extension of his contract as city manager.
An African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) city councillor was threatened with firearms by a drunken Western Cape police officer and his brother on Monday night. The ACDP allege that the drunken police officer threatened ACDP councillor Sipho Xasana with a firearm after the vehicle he [the police officer] was in hit a parked car outside Xasana’s house on Monday night.
An earthquake measuring 6,0 on the Richter scale rocked Indonesia’s easternmost Papua province on Tuesday, causing panic among residents but no reported casualties, meteorologists said. The temblor came just days after a powerful quake left more than 5 400 dead on the central Java island.
Israel has condemned a ”repulsive” vote by Britain’s main university lecturers’ union to boycott colleges and academics unless they publicly oppose government policy in the Palestinian territories. Education Minister Yuli Tamir said on Monday that the decision would only serve to undermine academic independence.
President Robert Mugabe’s government is heightening repression against Zimbabwe’s opposition and critics of the veteran leader’s long rule, analysts say. Last week, the government published proposed legislation that would give it the authority to monitor phones and mail — both conventional and electronic.
The Tokyo High Court on Tuesday rejected a second appeal against the death sentence of a doomsday cult guru convicted over the deadly 1995 nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway. The decision brought Aum Supreme Truth founder Shoko Asahara closer to the gallows, more than 10 years after his sect stunned the nation.
Senior Zimbabwean opposition member Roy Bennett fears persecution from Zimbabwean state agents even while in South Africa waiting to appeal against his asylum rejection, he said in Johannesburg on Tuesday. The former Movement for Democratic Change MP fled to South Africa in March after being implicated in an arms find in Mutare, Zimbabwe.