Israel will continue its offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas until two soldiers are freed and rocket strikes end, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday told United Nations envoys. Israeli jets hit Lebanese army bases and flattened homes in a deadly new blitz of air strikes on Tuesday, the seventh day of an assault that has killed at least 240 people.
The supreme leader of Somalia’s increasingly powerful Islamist movement said on Tuesday that easing a 14-year-old United Nations arms embargo on the lawless nation would be a ”fatal mistake.” A day after a United States-created diplomatic body recommended ”urgent” modifications to the embargo, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys warned the move would plunge Somalia into new chaos.
A doctor and two nurses were arrested for killing four patients in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, investigators said on Tuesday. An arrest warrant filed on Monday charged that the doctor and nurses administered lethal doses of morphine and another drug to patients at Memorial Medical Centre.
Five people accused of the Johannesburg International airport heist were granted bail of between R20 000 and R50 000 by a Kempton Park Regional Court magistrate on Tuesday. Shaheed Rudolf (43) of Eersterus, Rushdee Rudolf (42) of Cape Town and Christopher Billings were granted bail of R50 000 each.
A member of the public shot dead one robber and residents nabbed another two in separate incidents in Pretoria on Tuesday, police said. In the first incident in Pretoria North, a man shot at two alleged robbers as they were trying to hijack a vehicle at the Kolonnade Shopping Centre, said spokesperson Constable Brenda Kgafela.
Clive Derby-Lewis, imprisoned for life for the murder of South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani in 1993, complained to the press ombudsman on Tuesday about an article describing former deputy president Jacob Zuma’s visit to him in prison. The Sunday Independent reported on July 16 that Zuma visited ”Hani’s killers” in a move said to have annoyed President Thabo Mbeki.
Luxemburg’s Frank Schleck won the 15th stage of the Tour de France over 187km from Gap to L’Alpe d’Huez on Tuesday. The CSC rider, who won the Amstel Gold Race earlier this year, finished 11 seconds ahead of Italian Damiano Cunego of the Lampre team.
South Africa winger Delron Buckley was handed a trial with English Premiership club Everton on Tuesday. Buckley (28) will train with the Merseysiders in an attempt to persuade manager David Moyes to give him a permanent contract. The Durban-born player was released by German club Borussia Dortmund at the end of last season.
South Africa is not doing enough to address the Aids pandemic, the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) said on Tuesday. ”It is very disturbing that other countries in sub-Saharan Africa have managed to reduce their Aids statistics while South Africa continues to have the highest HIV infection rate,” SAIRR researcher Marco MacFarlane said in a statement.
It begs belief that Minister of Safety and Security Charles Nqakula has had ”the unmitigated gall” to accept a position as the leader of the over 200-strong election observer delegation to the Democratic Republic of Congo elections ”when he is failing so abjectly at his job back home in South Africa”, the Democratic Alliance’s Dianne Kohler Barnard said on Tuesday.