South African Deputy President and facilitator of the Burundi peace process Jacob Zuma arrived in the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, on Tuesday for talks with key political stakeholders on the country’s peace process. Zuma said the talks would focus on general elections and on a faction of the Forces Nationales de Liberation rebel group.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef will become the largest protected marine region in the world when a ban on fishing over a third of its area is enforced later this year. The government intends to implement the ban midyear, despite the protests of commercial fishers who have battled the proposal for four years.
One of the Boeremag’s alleged leaders, Dr Lets Pretorius, smiled broadly and his wife burst into tears and hugged him after a Pretoria High Court judge granted him R500 000 bail on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the prosecution is to launch an urgent application next week for the withdrawal of two of the defence advocates.
The head of Russia’s cash-starved navy caused uproar on Tuesday when he announced that the fleet’s flagship nuclear-powered missile cruiser Peter the Great had been temporarily withdrawn from service because of fears that it ”could explode at any moment”.
Intelligence and anti-terrorism services in Britain and other European countries have been given the names of several Islamist radicals suspected of taking part in the Madrid train bombings who have fled Spain, according to western intelligence officials.
South Africa’s CPIX inflation (headline inflation excluding mortgage costs) was up 4,8% year-on-year for metro and other areas in February compared with 4,2% in January and 4% in December, Statistics South Africa said on Wednesday. "It is what we expected," an economist said.
Global index company FTSE is to continue to treat South Africa as an advanced emerging market, the JSE Securities Exchange South Africa (JSE) said in a statement on Wednesday. At the invitation of FTSE, the JSE made representations in December 2003 to the FTSE policy committee.
South Africa, Botswana and Namibia have all met the conditions required for international trade in ivory, the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism said on Tuesday. It said the process had been delayed due to lack of data from certain south-east Asian countries.
Nine Iraqi police officers and trainees died on Tuesday when gunmen sprayed bullets into a minivan in which they were travelling south of Baghdad near the town of Mussayab. Mussayab’s police chief, Major Kadhim Ajmi, said the killers were in a red Opel which drove past the car and shot into it.
The Israeli government has approved the elimination of the entire leadership of Hamas and other militant groups following the assassination of the Islamic resistance movement’s founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Israel’s internal security minister, Tsahi Hanegbi, said the government had given a green light to the army to kill ”the worst terrorists”.
Israel ‘targeting Hamas leadership’
‘Israel has opened the gate to hell’