The Presidency has dismissed newspaper allegations concerning Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, saying they do not warrant President Thabo Mbeki taking action against her. Earlier, it was reported Tshabalala-Msimang was to seek legal advice about a Sunday Times report alleging she went on a ”hospital booze binge”.
About 3 500 mine workers will continue their strike over low salaries on Tuesday, trade union Solidarity said. Spokesperson Reint Dykema said Solidarity members started striking at coal mines around the country on Monday over an inadequate pay offer, particularly for artisans.
An American fingerprint expert on Monday accused South African police of fabricating fingerprint evidence to secure a conviction in the Inge Lotz hammer murder. The expert, Pat Wertheim, was the first witness called in defence of accused Fred van der Vyver, who has elected not to testify himself.
The world’s oldest person, a Japanese woman who counted eating well and getting plenty of sleep as the secret of her longevity, died on Monday at age 114, a news report said. Yone Minagawa, who lived in a nursing home but was still sprightly late in life, died "of old age" on Monday evening, Kyodo News reported.
African nations have been falling over themselves to pledge support for an expanded peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s Darfur region under United Nations and African Union auspices. At least six countries have quickly promised troops. But in arguably Africa’s second biggest trouble spot, Somalia, the rush to supply Darfur has a bitter ring.
Zimbabwe’s embattled President Robert Mugabe vowed on Monday he would not change course because of Western opposition to his policies and instructed landlords and businesses to seek state approval for all price increases. Mugabe (83) faces an economic crisis marked by the world’s highest inflation rate of more than 4Â 500%.
Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan freed two South Korean women hostages on Monday, officials in Seoul said, and they have been handed over to the Red Crescent. Reuters witnesses said the two women arrived in the village of Arzoo, near the city of Ghazni, in a saloon car driven by two tribal elders.
In sacking his deputy health minister, a vocal critic of the government’s Aids policies, South African President Thabo Mbeki has finally bared his authoritarian fangs, analysts said. Mbeki last week dismissed Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, who had campaigned vigorously for a more scientific approach to the battle against HIV/Aids.
The war-crimes trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor has been delayed again after his new lawyers asked for more time to study the case, the court announced on Monday. ”The Charles Taylor trial will not proceed on August 20 as originally scheduled,” Solomon Moriba, a spokesperson for the United Nations-backed tribunal trying Taylor, said.
Organisers of a kissing event in Budapest said on Monday they have earned a place in the <i>Guinness Book of Records</i> for the most number of couples locking lips at the same time. They said they would submit video footage and documentation showing 7 451 couples were locked in simultaneous buccal bonding for 10 seconds on Sunday.