A total of 103 petitions have been filed to Cameroon’s highest court to annul results of this month’s legislative elections that handed President Paul Biya’s governing party a landslide victory, a court official said on Monday. A number of the 45 parties figuring on the election lists on July 22 had filed petitions, but most came from the main opposition parties.
Liberia on Monday resumed diamond trading after lifting a self-imposed ban on the gems, officials said. The embargo imposed four years ago had been in line with a United Nations ban on the country’s diamonds, blamed for fuelling a barbaric 14-year civil war in the resource-rich West African nation.
The South African emerging players cricket squad that participated in the 2007 Emerging Players Tournament in Brisbane, Australia, over the past two weeks landed back home with the trophy in hand after beating strong teams from Australia, New Zealand and India. On Saturday South Africa beat New Zealand in the final of the tournament by 82 runs.
Opposition parties in the Johannesburg city council are furious at the ruling African National Congress (ANC) limiting their speaking time to four seconds per councillor. The parties quoted the ANC’s chief whip in the council as saying: ”If a party cannot say what they want to say in eight seconds, it is not worth saying.”
The possibility of declaring fire-ravaged parts of Mpumalanga disaster zones could not be precluded, Minister of Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi said on Monday. Earlier in the day, Mufamadi and Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Lindiwe Hendricks conducted a helicopter surveillance of sites destroyed by fires in the province.
Theunis Olivier was of a sober and sane mind when he sodomised and later strangled six-year-old Steven Siebert in Plettenberg Bay, the Cape High Court heard on Monday. In his statement submitted to the court, Olivier said he was normal when he committed the crime.
South Africans are increasingly being targeted by international crime syndicates to be ”money mules”, the South African Banking Risk Information Centre said on Monday. A money mule or e-mule is someone who is tricked into using his or her bank account to launder money.
Oil prices fell on Monday as traders took profits after crude futures settled near an all-time high in the previous session. Light, sweet crude for September delivery lost 46 cents to ,72 a barrel in Asian electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, mid-afternoon in Singapore.
A fundamental change in the design of microprocessors is presenting software developers with a challenge — and a huge financial opportunity. Chip makers are no longer racing to have the fastest microprocessor and have shifted their focus away from building chips with a single, super-fast calculating core.
Fears that teenagers using the social networking website MySpace are exposing themselves to sexual predators by disclosing too many personal details are probably overblown, researchers say. The site had come under fire from parents, teachers and law enforcement.