A new team from Britain’s Royal Navy is due in South Africa next month to help train South African Navy officers to work in new ships and submarines, the Chief of the South African Navy, Vice-Admiral Johannes Mudimu, said on Monday. The United Kingdom’s First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, is currently on a week-long official visit in South Africa.
The United Nations human rights chief said on Monday ”several hundred” civilians — far more than first thought — may have died in late August attacks by militias in the south of Sudan’s violent Darfur region. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Louise Arbour, said the attacks appeared to have been carried out with the ”knowledge and material support” of the government.
The South African Police Service’s claim that all Gauteng police stations have a family violence, child abuse and sexual offences (FCS) officer is ”a total untruth”, the Democratic Alliance said on Monday. A DA survey showed the SAPS was misleading the public about the closure of police family and child violence units.
United States-led coalition and Afghan troops have killed 49 Taliban insurgents in two separate battles in southern Afghanistan, the defence ministry said on Monday. This year’s fighting is the worst since coalition forces ousted the hard-line Taliban government in late 2001. The latest battles were in Deh Rawud district of rugged Uruzgan province over the past two days, a ministry statement said.
A grade 10 pupil was found stabbed to death on the sports fields of a Johannesburg school on Monday morning, said police. The 19-year-old had been stabbed four times, said Captain Schalk Bornman. His body was found at 7am by fellow pupils at Forest High School, in Forest Hill, southern Johannesburg.
The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) has asked all its elected members in provincial legislatures and Parliament to lodge letters of resignation, the Mercury reported on Monday. It said this was aimed at rooting out ”dead wood”, and the letters would only be activated in cases where representatives had failed to perform.
President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union — Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) party won two parliamentary by-elections at the weekend, Zimbabwe media said on Monday, confirming its grip on the country’s rural areas. The MDC, which marked its seventh anniversary with a rally in the capital Harare at the weekend, is still struggling to make inroads into rural areas.
Ever wanted the mobile number 123 456 789? In Iran it can be yours, if you have tens of thousands of dollars to spare. The Islamic republic’s telecom
United States economist Edmund S Phelps won the 2006 Nobel Economics Prize on Monday for work on trade-offs in macroeconomic policy, the Nobel jury said, noting that his work had improved understanding of how policy affected welfare for present and future generations.
The 603-carat Lesotho Promise diamond, the 15th largest rough diamond ever discovered, has been sold in Antwerp for $12,36-million, according to Gem Diamonds, owners of Letseng Mine in Lesotho where the diamond was recently discovered. "This has been a fantastic day for the Letseng Diamond Mine and for the people of Lesotho," said Lesotho’s Minister of Natural Resources, Dr Khaketla.