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/ 6 February 2008
Pakistani Taliban fighters announced a ceasefire on Wednesday after months of clashes with security forces and suicide attacks across the north-west of the country. But a military spokesperson said that while fighting had died down no truce had been agreed.
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/ 6 February 2008
Dozens of tornadoes ripped across southern American states, causing severe damage and killing at least 45 people, officials and United States media said on Wednesday. More than 50 tornadoes touched down as a series of thunderstorms rare for the winter season rolled through the region late on Tuesday and early on Wednesday.
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/ 6 February 2008
There is a ”very real” risk that South Africa could face an economic recession as a result of the current electricity crisis, the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Sacci) said on Wednesday. ”We have already been going through an economic slowdown; this [the electricity crisis] could push us into a recession,” Sacci economist Richard Downing said.
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/ 6 February 2008
The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Wednesday lauded the decision by the chairperson of Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), Themba Godi, to place the DA’s request for Scopa to reopen the arms-deal probe on the agenda.
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/ 6 February 2008
Any move by Britain to impose visa requirements on South Africans will have a serious effect on business and travel links between the two countries, the Democratic Alliance (DA) warned. British legislators were now examining evidence that might lead to such a visa requirement, the DA’s Tony Leon said.
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/ 6 February 2008
As Chinese prepare for Year of the Rat celebrations, roadside entrepreneurs in Thailand are serving rodent meat, uncooked or ready to eat, and customers are snapping it up for 150 baht (,82) a kilogram. These rats are the kind found in rice fields, not the filthy garbage-can-marauders familiar to city-dwellers.
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/ 6 February 2008
A Belgian tourist was robbed on Table Mountain by two men armed with knives, Cape Town police said on Wednesday. Captain Randall Stoffels said the men robbed the 56-year-old hiker of his camera, cellphone and an undisclosed amount of cash. The tourist was ascending Table Mountain through Skeleton Gorge when he was attacked.
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/ 6 February 2008
A British student swallowed his door key to prevent friends from forcing him to go home because he was drunk, reports said on Wednesday. Chris Foster, studying computer design at Bournemouth University in southern England, had drunk six beers as well as vodka and whisky when his friends decided he should go home and sleep it off.
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/ 6 February 2008
Ekurhuleni metro police head Robert McBride was awarded R200 000 of the R3,6-million damages claim he lodged against the Citizen in the Johannesburg High Court on Wednesday. The case concerned mainly editorial comment by acting editor Martin Williams and opinion in a column by freelancer Andrew Kenny in September and October 2003.
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/ 6 February 2008
Italy’s president dissolved Parliament on Wednesday and the caretaker government prepared to call a snap election, likely in mid-April, that could mark a return to power of media magnate Silvio Berlusconi. President Giorgio Napolitano’s bid for cross-party support to reform Italy’s messy voting rules before a fresh election met stiff resistance from Berlusconi.