The JSE was firm at midday on Wednesday, driven higher by sharply stronger banks and financial stocks. By noon, the all-share index had collected 0,49% as banks and financials advanced 3,07% and 2,30% respectively. The platinum mining index recovered 0,94% and resources edged up 0,12%.
Poland’s ambassador to Iraq was wounded in an explosion targeting a Polish embassy convoy in Baghdad on Wednesday, a diplomatic source in the Iraqi capital said. Poland backed the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 which toppled Saddam Hussein and currently has around 1 000 troops in the country.
Former President Jimmy Carter had a heated exchange with Sudanese security who prevented him from visiting a Darfur tribal leader in Kebkabiya, North Darfur on Wednesday. The exchange occurred as Carter toured Darfur with a group of elder statesmen including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) members are expected to converge on the Labour Court in Johannesburg on Wednesday to hear a final ruling on a secondary strike. Union spokesperson Dumisani Langa said if the court ruled in their favour, they would rope in other Gauteng municipalities to join the strike.
A Thai chef cooked up fears of a chemical attack in London when fumes from his eye-wateringly hot chilli sauce led to the emergency services being called out. Chalemchai Tangjariyapoon, who works at the Thai Cottage restaurant in Soho, was dry-frying bird’s eye chillies as he prepared a huge batch of nam prik pao.
Burma’s junta arrested more people under the cover of darkness on Wednesday despite a crescendo of international outrage during a keenly watched United Nations mission to bring an end to a bloody crackdown on protests. At least eight truckloads of prisoners were hauled out of downtown Rangoon.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has lost his campaign to prevent President Robert Mugabe from attending a Europe-Africa summit in Portugal in December despite the European Union (EU) travel ban on the Zimbabwean president. Brown is also facing stiff resistance to his demand that the EU appoint a special envoy to deal with the Zimbabwe crisis.
African Union (AU) peacekeepers are outgunned and outnumbered by rebels and militias in Darfur, the AU force commander Martin Luther Agwai said on Tuesday. He said this was one reason an AU base in Haskanita, south-east Darfur, was overwhelmed so quickly during a recent attack on the peacekeepers.
The United States company at the centre of the scandal over the role of private security guards in Iraq brushed aside accusations that it was a cowboy outfit on Tuesday, even as details emerged about a incident in which an allegedly drunken member was involved in a fatal shooting.
The Canadian general who headed the United Nations peacekeeping force during the 1994 Rwandan genocide gave a chilling account on Tuesday of how roadblocks popped up like mushrooms and served only to pick out and murder Tutsis. Romeo Dallaire testified at the Canadian war crimes trial of Desire Munyaneza, who is accused of leading the attacks.