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.
Sierra Leone on Monday anxiously awaited preliminary results from watershed elections that international observers declared free and fair, despite allegations of vote-rigging from some parties. Preliminary results from Saturday’s presidential and legislative ballots were expected later in the day.
Elite cycling outfit Astana of reigning Tour of Spain champion Alexandre Vinokourov were told on Monday they cannot compete in next month’s Vuelta because of recent doping scandals concerning the team. Vuelta organisers said in a statement that they were withdrawing the Swiss-based Kazakh team’s invitation for the September 1 to 23 race.
Springbok coach Jake White has named a near full-strength side for South Africa’s first World Cup warm-up match against Namibia at Newlands on Wednesday. The match will see the return to action for the Springboks of scrumhalf Fourie du Preez, who’s recovered from injury that kept him out of action during the Boks’ other Tests this year.
Former Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) leader Motsoko Pheko is an opportunist who wants his dismissal from the party postponed forever, the Cape High Court heard on Monday. Opposing Pheko’s court bid to stop the PAC replacing him as an MP, PAC legal representative advocate Thami Ncoagwane said Pheko had been making contradictory requests to various courts.
Africa is in a position to provide all 26Â 000 troops for the United Nations’s peacekeeping operation in Darfur, the head of the African Union said on Monday. Forces from countries outside the continent were not needed for the operation, in western Sudan, because African nations had already pledged sufficient numbers.