Formula One chiefs have launched a probe into how breakaway Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat managed to officiate at the prize-giving ceremony for the Turkish Grand Prix. The race in Istanbul on Sunday, won by Brazilian Felipe Massa in a Ferrari, was watched by an estimated viewing audience of 2,5-billion worldwide.
South Africa will not take up the role of mediator in the peace process between the Ugandan government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said on Tuesday. Pahad said South Africa received a letter from the LRA last week asking it to mediate the process.
If there is one place that symbolises the dysfunction of public health, it is the Eastern Cape. Already crippled by staff shortages, it continues to haemorrhage nurses and doctors, who are driven away by the working conditions. It is a cruel and seemingly unending conundrum. Add to this the Aids epidemic and the recipe is one for near total breakdown.
The JSE was a mixed bag just before noon on Tuesday after an unexciting morning’s trade. A slightly firmer rand put a bit of a dampener on the resources sector, but industrials and financials benefited from positive global markets. By 11.53am, the all-share index eased 0,07%.
South Africa’s skills challenges "manifest especially" in those areas of the economy that need technical and specialised skills, such as engineers in mining as well as in the chemical, electrical, mechanical and nuclear fields, while artisans, geologists and economists are also needed, Minister of Minerals and Energy Buyelwa Sonjica said on Tuesday.
A truce that could spell the end of one of Africa’s longest and most brutal wars came into effect on Tuesday, Uganda’s military said. Under the pact signed on Saturday at peace talks in southern Sudan, the fugitive rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have three weeks to assemble at two south Sudanese camps.
The retrial of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the Aids virus resumed on Tuesday. All six defendants were present to hear what defence lawyer Thaman al-Bizanti said would be the testimony of a young girl who was among those infected.
At least five people, including three children, drowned and thousands were forced to flee their homes early on Tuesday after heavy rains flooded vast swathes of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, residents said. The deaths were reported in neighbourhoods in northern and southern Mogadishu inundated by the downpours, they said.
Pro-Russian forces have allegedly kidnapped a young woman who secretly married Shamil Basayev, the Chechen warlord who was killed last month. Elina Ersenoyeva (26) was seized in Chechnya’s capital, Grozny, on August 17 by masked gunmen in an apparent attempt to extract information about her husband’s accomplices.
More rioting rocked Baluchistan province on Monday in a second day of furious protests over the killing of a prominent tribal leader by Pakistan’s military. Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti (79) the spearhead of a Baluch nationalist revolt, died on Saturday when jets and artillery pounded his hideout in a remote cave.