The trial of four Zimbabwean newspaper directors charged with illegally publishing the country’s only independent newspaper, the Daily News, resumed on Monday in Harare. The defence has asked that the charges against the four, who face fines or up to two years in jail, be dropped.
A large number of awaiting-trial prisoners escaped from the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Monday, hours after a Democratic Party MP pledged to challenge Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula to explain the reason for the large number of suspects escaping from police custody.
A Chinese man has handed himself over to Port Elizabeth police following one of the biggest illegal perlemoen busts in the Eastern Cape. Police on Friday raided a smallholding and recovered more than a ton of perlemoen as well as equipment used to process the shellfish for illegal export. Three people were arrested.
Democratic Alliance MP Roy Jankielsohn has vowed to challenge Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula to explain, in Parliament, the high number of suspects escaping from police custody. Jankielsohn says that Nqakula and his department are accountable for the high number of escapees.
Iraq’s interim President Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar said in an interview published on Monday that the government will within ”a couple of days” offer an amnesty to insurgents who have fought United States-led forces but are ready to lay down their arms. Amnesty will not apply to ”murderers, rapists, and kidnappers”, Yawar said.
A war cemetery near Newcastle was vandalised by robbers who were apparently looking for treasure, the Amafa Heritage in KwaZulu-Natal said on Monday. The robbers used a front-end loader to gouge at graves and destroy headstones at Skuinshoogte, a burial site of a battle of the first Anglo-Boer South African War.
At least 14 people were injured during the annual ”running of the bulls” festival in Pamplona, Spain, on Monday. Among those injured were two United States citizens, a French national and a visitor from Colombia. The festival, made world-famous by writer Ernest Hemingway, comes to an end on Wednesday.
The threat of HIV/Aids can be countered by abstinence, loving relationships and marriage instead of relying solely on condoms, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni told delegates at the International Aids Conference in Bangkok on Monday.
President Thabo Mbeki said on Monday he is concerned by the way people ask about how much African peace-keeping efforts cost, in the light of the current debate about the cost of the Pan-African Parliament. He was speaking at the South African Council of Churches’ three-yearly conference in Johannesburg.
The British scientific establishment responded with anger on Monday to an attack by Prince Charles on nanotechnology — applied science involving tiny particles. Over the weekend the prince suggested using the technology in fertility treatment could lead to a disaster of the kind caused by the use of thalidomide.