South Africa’s transport services are ”sure to improve dramatically” in time for the 2010 Soccer World Cup, Transport Minister Jeff Radebe said on Wednesday. ”It will be a defining moment for our transport system,” he told reporters in Pretoria. The tournament will not be a world-class event if the majority of journeys by visitors are not completed efficiently, he said.
At least 33 people have died in two weeks of flooding in north-east Brazil, and more than 77 000 people have been left homeless, with officials warning on Wednesday that the heavy rain would continue. The state of Paraiba was the worst-hit, according to the national Civil Defence service. Twenty-six of the fatalities occurred there, and 76 towns are under water.
The smallest planet discovered outside our solar system has been found by Spanish scientists. ”I think we are very close, just a few years away, from detecting a planet like Earth,” team leader Ignasi Ribas told a news conference on Wednesday. The rocky planet, with a radius about 50% greater than the Earth’s, circles a small red dwarf star 30 light years away.
South Africa should use its powerful position on the United Nations Security Council to put the Zimbabwean election saga on the international body’s agenda, Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said on Wednesday. Zille, who is currently in New York, said in a statement she would meet South Africa’s ambassador to the United Nations.
Thousands of rebels massed in Sudan are about to attack neighbouring Chad in an attempt to destabilise it, Chad’s defence minister said on Wednesday. ”Once again the regime of [Sudanese President] Omar al-Bashir … is massing, training and heavily arming thousands of its mercenaries,” said Defence Minister Mahamat Ali Abdallah.
Najwa Petersen on Wednesday formally pleaded not guilty to the murder of her entertainer husband, Taliep. Taliep was shot in the couple’s Athlone, Cape Town, home in December 2006; his wife is standing trial in the Cape High Court along with three men the state claims she hired to carry out the killing.
South Africa’s manufacturing output growth accelerated to an unadjusted 3,5% in volume terms year-on-year in February, from a revised 1,2% in January, official data showed on Wednesday. Compared with January, manufacturing production in volume terms increased by a seasonally adjusted 2,7%, Statistics South Africa said.
Islamist fighters in Somalia seized a strategic town north of Mogadishu on Wednesday for the second time in a fortnight, a spokesperson for the insurgents said. Jowhar is the most significant of several towns the rebels have captured in recent months, highlighting the inability of the Western-backed interim government to impose its authority.
The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) will seek to reshape its constitution and organisational structure at its national conference, the party said on Wednesday. The party will hold its seventh annual national conference at the University of Fort Hare in July.
The global economic outlook is becoming increasingly grim as the United States appears unable to escape recession from a housing meltdown, the effects of which are still spreading, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Wednesday. Global expansion is set to slow to 3,7% in 2008 amid an unfolding crisis that began in the United States, the IMF said.