A brother of a slain Taliban leader said al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was alive and well and that he had received a letter of condolence from him after his brother was killed in May. ”He is alive, active and well,” Haji Mansour Dadullah, a Taliban militant leader, said of Bin Laden.
A 10-year-old Durban boy accidentally shot dead his 13-year-old friend after finding a gun in the garage where they were playing, police said on Tuesday. Superintendent Danelia Veldhuizen said that Khanyisani Mngadi and his 10-year-old friend were playing in the garage at another friend’s house on Monday when the younger boy found the gun behind a sofa.
Residents of Gauteng earn more, are better educated and are likely to live longer than people in other provinces, a South African Institute of Race Relations study has found. In a report released on Tuesday, it identified ”glaring inequalities” in service delivery and living conditions across the provinces.
The armed Basque separatist group ETA said on Tuesday it was ending a ”permanent” ceasefire declared last year, accusing the Spanish government of persecuting the group instead of negotiating with it. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero immediately labelled the move a ”mistake” and asked the outfit to definitively eschew violence.
A 31-year-old man accused of keeping girls as sex slaves in an underground hideout is expected to appear in the Cape High Court on Wednesday. Johannes Mowers was believed to be behind a two-year reign of terror in the Hemel en Aarde community in Hermanus and is believed to have kept under-aged girls as sex slaves in a hide-out.
New boys, lame ducks and a problem child head to Germany on Wednesday for a Group of Eight (G8) summit that will address the world’s most pressing concerns. The annual major power jamboree is meant to focus on policies, but personalities might steal the limelight this year thanks to significant changes to the longstanding cast list.
Diamond giant De Beers said on Tuesday that its 2006 Diamond Trading Company sales reached $6,15-billion — the second highest figure ever achieved. The 2006 sales were down from 2005’s record $6,5-billion, reflecting reduced purchases from Alrosa in line with the commitments given to the European Commission.
Motorists should not put ”pressure on the pumps” ahead of Wednesday’s fuel-price hike as some filling stations may run dry, the South African Petroleum Retailers’ Association said. Spokesperson Peter Noke said Gauteng has been experiencing fuel shortages, and on Monday 23 Engen petrol stations were without fuel for the entire day.
Kenyan police have killed at least 21 suspected members of a banned sect in a Nairobi slum in retaliation for the killing of two police officers, a police spokesperson said on Tuesday. ”Following the killing of two police officers … 21 people who were resisting arrest were killed” overnight, said national police spokesperson Eric Kiraithe.
News items on disease, conflict and corruption in Africa are crowding out positive stories of burgeoning economies on the continent, speakers at a global technology and design meeting said this week. Many African economies are booming and attracting interest from people keen to invest in them despite hurdles such as bad roads, erratic power supply or insecurity, they added.