Italian yacht Luna Rossa suffered a shock defeat to South African Team Shosholoza on Tuesday as the Louis Vuitton Cup saw racing for only the third time in nine days. Wind speeds of eight knots meant that for only the third day since the Cup began at the beginning of last week, the 11 challengers took to the waters around Valencia.
A suicide truck bomb killed 25 people and wounded 44 others near the Iraqi insurgent stronghold of Ramadi on Tuesday, police said. The attack took place near a makeshift football field and market in the Albufarraj area east of Ramadi as a police patrol passed by. Police, women and children were among the dead, police said.
Senior Scorpions prosecutor Portia Refiloe Kgantsi accepted R12 000 in cash and R6 000 in car hire from two awaiting-trial prisoners who relied on her help to beat their fraud charges, the prisoners told the Johannesburg High Court on Tuesday.
The idea of a single public service does not seek to undermine the distinctions between local, provincial and national government, Minister of Public Service and Administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said on Tuesday. She was speaking at the national conference of the South African Local Government Association in Midrand.
The government’s new electronic national traffic information system, eNaTIS, had processed more than two million transactions by Tuesday, but received heavy criticism from the motor industry for slow service and backlogs. ”Since April 12 to date we’ve done 2,3-million transactions in total,” said Department of Transport spokesperson Ntau Letebele.
International aid agencies reported scenes of chaos in Somalia on Tuesday as columns of people fled fierce fighting in the capital, Mogadishu, swelling the ranks of the 321 000 displaced since February. A United Nations refugee agency staffer reported a ”growing scene of chaos” on a main road out of Mogadishu.
A suicide car bomber struck a United States military outpost north of Baghdad, killing nine soldiers and wounding 20 others, in the deadliest attack on American ground forces in Iraq in 16 months. In an attack claimed by al-Qaeda, the bomb exploded against a patrol base in the restive province of Diyala on Monday.
Tobacco sales delayed over a pricing stalemate between farmers and buyers in Zimbabwe were nearly called off again as a dispute with the government over foreign exchange rates flared on Tuesday. Sales were initially set to start at 7.30am local time at the main auction house in Harare, but the first bale was only sold at 3pm.
Scores of gunmen attacked a Chinese-run oil field in Ethiopia on Tuesday, killing 74 people, including nine Chinese nationals, a government spokesperson said. ”It is a terrorist act, ordered by a terrorist alliance that includes ONLF,” said the prime minister’s spokesperson, Berekat Simon, referring to the Ogaden National Liberation Front separatist group.
About 30 fires were ignited in mountain ranges across the Western Cape by a lightning storm in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Spokesperson for Working on Fire, Val Charlton, said on Tuesday afternoon that the outbreak of these fires after lightning and thunder was ”a perfectly natural event”.