All vehicle testing stations in Johannesburg and Pretoria were open on Wednesday, but glitches with the new traffic information system continued. The new service is electronic which means traffic-related transactions may be completed using automated teller machines and the internet.
Renewed violence between Ethiopian troops and Somali insurgents killed at least five people in Mogadishu, residents said on Wednesday. Heavy shelling rocked the southern area of the seaside capital on Tuesday night, and some mortars fell close to the presidential palace.
At least 32 workers were killed and two injured on Wednesday when they were engulfed by molten steel at a metal factory in north-east China, the government said. The accident was triggered when a steel ladle, with a capacity of 30 tonnes of liquid steel, sheared off from the blast furnace, spilling molten metal onto the factory floor about 3m below.
The Simplified Spelling Society (SSS) is celebrating its 99th birthday by launching a new campaign to make it easier to read and write English. It may be the world’s most universal language, but linguistic experts say it has failed to adapt for the past 500 years and now half the globe’s English speakers have difficulty spelling.
The Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi have relaunched a regional economic bloc that is seen as a key step in restoring peace and stability in the turbulent central African region. The Great lakes Countries Economic Community, known under its French acronym CEPGL, was created in 1976 to ease trade and free movement of people.
An attempt by First National Bank (FNB) to appeal a December court order forbidding it to continue with its Million-a-Month competition was dismissed on Tuesday, the National Lotteries Board said. FNB filed an application to appeal after a judge restrained them from conducting the competition on December 15 last year.
A Pakistani terror suspect extradited from South Africa and held for 18 months in Islamabad without charge has been detained for alleged links to the 2005 London suicide attacks, his lawyer said on Wednesday. Khalid Mehmood Rashid (25) appeared before a federal review board at the Supreme Court in Islamabad for the first time last week and his detention was extended by three months.
President Thabo Mbeki on Tuesday launched the first of South Africa’s six new Nepad e-schools, Hewlett Packard (HP) said. The first school to be equipped with an HP computer lab, complete with servers, personal computers, printers, faxes, scanners, copiers and wireless connectivity, was the Maripe Secondary School at Bushbuckridge in Limpopo.
Zimbabwe was marking its 27th anniversary of independence from Britain on Wednesday amid an economic meltdown and spiralling political tensions that have taken the shine out of this year’s event. Veteran President Robert Mugabe, in power in the former Rhodesia since 1980, was due to deliver a keynote speech at the Harare football stadium.
Iran’s army will ”cut off the hand” of any attacker and is at the ready to fulfil its defensive duties, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday during an annual military parade. Iran is embroiled in a row with the West over its nuclear ambitions.