Authorities in Angola have cleared about 50-million square metres of landmines under the country’s ongoing demining programme, state media reported on Tuesday. The coordinator of the executive demining commission, Joao Baptista Kussumua, made the statement at a ceremony to receive two demining machines donated by the Japanese government.
HIV has slashed life expectancy in Zimbabwe by up to 19 years for men and 22 years for women but births still outpace deaths, according to the first study to detail how the Aids pandemic has affected the country’s wider population. The study, led by Simon Gregson of Imperial College London, sought to gauge HIV’s impact on Zimbabwe to see if researchers got it right in 1989.
Fraud, theft and unauthorised spending are on the rise in government departments, according to a Public Service Commission (PSC) report tabled at Parliament on Tuesday. The PSC’s Report on Financial Misconduct for the 2005/06 Financial Year says this cost the taxpayer at least R45-million at the time.
After ending 1,5% higher on Monday, the JSE was back in the red on Tuesday morning following a decline in the Dow overnight. However, the local bourse was being cushioned somewhat by the softer rand and good interest in direct miners. By 12.11pm, the all-share index was off 0,15%.
South Africa’s real gross domestic product (GDP) at market prices on a quarter-on-quarter seasonally adjusted annualised (saa) basis rose by 4,5% in the second quarter of 2007 from 4,7% in the first quarter of 2007, Statistics South Africa said on Tuesday. This comes after GDP rose as high as 5,6% in the fourth quarter of last year.
Forest fires that have killed at least 63 people in Greece raged for a fifth day on Tuesday, although they were not threatening any villages, a firefighters’ spokesperson said. ”At the moment there is no threat to the villages, but the direction of the wind is impossible to predict,” the spokesperson said.
Skippi, a wily kangaroo on the run since early August, was returned to his home at a petting zoo Monday in southern Germany, but not after a chase through the German Alps that left the animal with a strained leg. The injured marsupial was captured in a cornfield near Leutkirch im Allgaeu.
Natural disasters are far more destructive than wars, and the damage will only worsen unless drastic change is taken to address global climate change, a former United Nations humanitarian chief said on Tuesday. "Already seven times more livelihoods are devastated by natural disasters than by war worldwide, and this is going to get worse," Jan Egeland said.
At least 31 people died and nine more were missing after heavy rainstorms hit south-west China, state media reported on Tuesday. Xinhua news agency said 17 people were killed and three others were missing after the torrential rains in Sichuan province in the past several days.
Police and health workers in Papua New Guinea launched an investigation on Tuesday into reports that people living with Aids in the rugged South Pacific nation were being buried alive by their relatives. Romanus Pakure, deputy director of the government’s National Aids Council, said the allegations were ”a wake-up call”.