The government warned striking health workers to return to work on Monday or face being fired while soldiers staffed hospitals and private ambulance services moved seriously-ill babies to private facilities. ”If they are not at their workplace [by Monday], then we will be instituting a process of terminating their services,” said national director general of health Thamsanqa Dennis Mseleku.
Soldiers, volunteers and private hospitals have stepped in to help public-health facilities crippled by the public-service pay strike which started on Friday. Army medics were on duty from 8am on Sunday in wards of the hard-hit King Edward VIII hospital, in Durban.
France top the European Championships qualification group B after a 2-0 win over Ukraine in Paris on Saturday but Italy are hot on their heels following a 2-1 win over the Faroe Islands. While France’s second half performance, in which goals from Frank Ribery and Nicolas Anelka earned them a deserved three points, exuded panache, world champions Italy were a shadow of their normal selves.
A stampede in Zambia killed 12 soccer fans and injured many others after a match between the home team and Congo Brazaville late on Saturday. Copperbelt police chief Antonnell Mutentwa told Reuters 46 soccer fans were injured and admitted in hospital in the copper mining town bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo.
About 60 fleeing Taliban guerrillas were confirmed dead after their boat sank in a river in southern Afghanistan, the Defence Ministry said on Sunday. ”According to reports we received, all of them on board were Taliban and were killed,” Defence Ministry spokesperson General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told reporters.
World number one Lorena Ochoa finished with bogeys on three of the last six holes but still kept a three-shot lead after Saturday’s third round of the LPGA Ginn Tribute. Ochoa stood on 11-under par 205 after 54 holes with American Nicole Castrale three strokes back in second.
Three metro cops who apparently flouted procedure by removing Ekurhuleni metro police boss Robert McBride from the scene of his accident are now suing him. The three, Stanley Segathevan, Patrick Johnstone and Ithumeleng Koko, are suing their boss and the Ekurhuleni metro police department for R4,5-million.
Anti-terrorism agents who foiled a plot to blow up fuel tanks at New York’s JFK airport arrested three men on Saturday and were searching for a fourth, all described as ”al-Qaeda wannabes”.
International Cricket Council president Percy Sonn, who died last weekend following complications after undergoing minor colon surgery, was laid to rest in Cape Town on Saturday. Hundreds of people gathered at St George’s cathedral in the city centre for a funeral service.
For some time, there had been signs — if you cared to read such things — that Lindsay Lohan’s life was about to take a very public turn for the worse. Early last month, she appeared on former jailbird Martha Stewart’s TV show, wearing a Fifties throwback cocktail dress and whipping up a tray of cream puffs.