Renegade troops killed several regular army troops and wounded 30 others in five hours of heavy fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) eastern Nord-Kivu province early on Thursday, military and United Nations officials said. Soldiers serving General Laurent Nkunda attacked an army post, killed an undisclosed number and wounded 30 at Katale.
After meting out a severe tongue-lashing over the behaviour of the state attorney and director general of justice’s offices on Thursday, the Constitutional Court said it wanted to issue an order making them accountable for their work. ”I have a deep intolerance for state officials who are paid to do their work and don’t do it,” said Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke.
Johannesburg Hospital closed seven theatres in July but is treating the same number of cases with a focus on complex medical care, the hospital’s CEO said on Thursday. ”The allegations that cases are being cancelled are not true for the tertiary cases. What is true is that those cases which are inappropriate are being referred elsewhere,” said Sagie Pillay.
The Chamber of Mines signed an agreement on Thursday with three unions over wages in the coal-mining sector. The chamber’s negotiator in the coal sector, Eric Nwedo, said the agreement would increase wages of higher-paid workers by between 7,5% and 8,5%. Lower-paid employees would get a 10% increase.
The Independent Democrats (ID) won another round in the floor-crossing battle on Thursday when the Cape High Court refused to overturn the expulsion from the party of Cape Town city councillor Achmat Williams. Deputy Judge President Jeanette Traverso also rejected Williams’s bid to delay his appeal hearing against the expulsion.
Despite persistent incredulous questioning by opposition parties, President Thabo Mbeki insisted on Thursday that the Zimbabwean government, the two factions of the Movement for Democratic Change and representatives of civil society are engaged in talks that will produce conditions for holding free and fair elections next March in an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity.
Claims of huge bribes, fevered meetings between leaders of political parties, angry letters to newspapers: yes, it’s floor-crossing season once more.
In a global effort to save amphibians from a deadly disease, zookeepers around the world want to turn 2008 into the ”Year of the Frog”. As many as 2 000 of the world’s 6 000 known amphibian species are in danger of extinction due to the spread of a parasite fungus called chytrid, which causes frogs to suffocate.
A diamond-encrusted skull art work by British contemporary artist Damien Hirst has been sold for £50-million (about R718-million) to an investment group, a spokesperson for the White Cube art gallery in London said on Thursday. The platinum skull, cast from an 18th-century European man, is coated in 8 601 diamonds.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s medical records, obtained unlawfully from the Cape Town Medi-Clinic, must be returned to the institution ”forthwith”, the Johannesburg High Court ordered on Thursday. Delivering the order in the case between the minister and the Sunday Times, the judge also said that all the minister’s medical records on journalists’ laptops be deleted.