Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Tuesday the withdrawal of ministers loyal to Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has not weakened his government and he will name technocrats to replace them soon. In the biggest Cabinet shake-up since al-Maliki took office a year ago, six Sadrist ministers pulled out of the government on Monday.
The United States’s principal deputy undersecretary for defence, Ryan Henry, met South African government officials on Tuesday to inform them of plans for the US military’s new Africa command. Henry is on an African tour to convince governments on the continent that there is nothing sinister about the proposed command.
At least 60 cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) have been detected this year in the Southern African kingdom of Swaziland, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday. Swaziland’s TB programmes manager, Themba Dlamini, said that none of those with the disease had died but added that they had all been placed in isolated wards in hospital.
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Hundreds of England’s Barmy Army fan club added more life to the highly charged atmosphere at the Kensington Oval for Tuesday’s World Cup clash with South Africa. England need a win to sneak into the last four, while a victory for South Africa would put the Proteas into the semifinals to join Australia, New Zealand and Sri Lanka.
Surging energy prices pushed consumer inflation in the United States up by the largest amount in nearly a year in March. Meanwhile, industrial output fell for the second time in the past three months, reflecting a big drop in production at the nation’s utilities because of the warmer-than-usual weather.
Chaos erupted in a small village in rural Malawi on Tuesday when Madonna and the one-year-old boy she hopes to adopt arrived at the orphanage where she found him. Scores of international and local journalists tried to force their way into the orphanage to get closer to Madonna, and were confronted by about 500 angry orphans.
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Addressing the Cape Town Press Club on Tuesday, former deputy president Jacob Zuma pledged not to withdraw legal action he has instituted against members of the media. He also said he would accept nomination for a leadership position at the ANC’s national conference near the end of this year.
International security giant Group 4 Securicor (G4S) must respect its workers’ basic rights or forget about 2010 World Cup contracts, said unionists on Tuesday. ”If they continue their abuses … we will make sure they do not see a god-darned contract in 2010,” said South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union general secretary Randall Howard.
Flood waters swirled through low-lying communities and evacuated residents waited for rivers to crest early on Tuesday as a spring storm blamed for at least 15 deaths nationwide lingered in the United States Northeast for a third day. The storm left a huge swathe of devastation, from the beaches of South Carolina to the mountains of Maine.
Both the number of malaria cases and deaths caused by it have decreased in Mpumalanga over the past seven years, the provincial health department said on Tuesday. There has been a steady drop in cases and a ”pleasing decline” in deaths since 2000/01, according to statistics released by the department.