Marking 40 years of Israeli occupation, President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday internal fighting had brought Palestinians to the brink of civil war. Yet Abbas, recalling what he described as the Arabs’ ”great defeat” by Israel in six days of war that began on June 5 1967, assured his people that statehood was within reach.
South Africa is on a strong financial footing, despite ”huge economic and social challenges”, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel told an International Monetary Conference meeting in Cape Town on Tuesday. ”The economy is performing well, but we still have millions living in poverty and many more unable to get jobs,” Manuel said.
A poor harvest due to adverse weather coupled with a worsening economic crisis will leave more than four million people in Zimbabwe in need of food assistance by early next year, according to a report issued on Tuesday by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation and the United Nations World Food Programme.
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.