The United States slapped fresh sanctions on Sudan over the Darfur conflict on Tuesday as it seeks a tough new United Nations Security Council resolution to punish Khartoum. US President George Bush expressed frustration with the Sudanese government over the plight of Darfur civilians.
Umaru Yar’Adua took office as President of Nigeria on Tuesday, promising to tackle a catalogue of crises in Africa’s most populous nation and conceding that his own election was ”not perfect”. In his inaugural address at a military parade ground in the capital, Abuja, Yar’Adua began by saying there were ”lapses and shortcomings” in the vote.
Libya announced on Tuesday it will sign a -million exploration deal with British energy giant BP, which London says plans to return the North African country after a 33-year absence. ”We are going to sign with BP an oil-exploration and -prospecting accord … worth -million,” said the head of Libya’s National Oil Corporation.
Outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in Libya for talks with President Moammar Gadaffi Tuesday as it was revealed that oil giant British Petroleum (BP) will soon resume oil and gas exploitation in the North African state after an absence of 30 years. Blair’s ”farewell trip” to Africa will also take him to Sierra Leone and South Africa.
Japan offered a compromise on Monday to break an impasse over its controversial plan to lift a 20-year moratorium of commercial whale hunting, but it was flatly rejected by the other key powers. The failure to end the deadlock threw the already polarised 75-nation International Whaling Commission into disarray.
Many so-called political prisoners held in South African jails committed their offences after 1994, Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Brigitte Mabandla said on Tuesday. Briefing the media in Cape Town, she said it would be incorrect to regard any inmate as a political prisoner.
International donors and African government institutions have to make good on their promises of aid for Africa, the African Monitor said on Tuesday. ”Promises to Africa have been made. The time to act is now,” African Monitor president Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane said in Johannesburg on Tuesday.
A Port Elizabeth man was told by Dora Nginza Hospital his mother had died while she was alive and well at home, the Herald Online reported on Tuesday. A horrified Vusumzi Blom, of Zwide in Port Elizabeth, rushed to his mother’s house in New Brighton after receiving the news — only to find her in good health and sleeping in bed.
The Cape High Court on Tuesday denied four men convicted in the Fancy Boys gangster case leave to appeal. Three Fancy Boys gang members, with sentences ranging from 10 to 20 years’ imprisonment, and a non-gangster who received stolen property from them had applied for leave to appeal.
The ailing electronic national traffic information system had a negative effect on car sales and the Gauteng economy, a business breakfast heard on Tuesday. Discussing the Gauteng Business Barometer for April, T-Sec economist Mike Schussler said April had been a particularly weak barometer.