An unseemly row was raging in Britain on Wednesday over whether Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister, should be granted a state funeral when she dies. Thatcher (80), who is currently enjoying good health, is generally seen as Britain’s most divisive post-war leader.
South Africa plans to introduce a new law that will broaden the legal definition of rape in a bid to clamp down on widespread sexual offences, the justice ministry said on Wednesday. South Africa has one of the world’s highest rates of violent crime, including rape.
Zimbabwe’s annual inflation rate has declined to 993,6% in July from 1 184,6%, the country’s Central Statistical Office (CSO) said on Wednesday. "The year-on-year rate of inflation in July 2006 was 993,6%, shedding 191 percentage points on the June rate of 1 184,6%," acting CSO director Moffat Nyoni told a news conference.
British police stepped up a high-profile probe on Wednesday into suspicions that a senior tabloid newspaper journalist and two other men intercepted phone calls from staff close to Prince Charles, heir to the throne. Anti-terrorist officers at London’s metropolitan police are investigating because of the potential security risks to the royal family.
Zimbabwe security agents have seized more than Z-trillion in old banknotes at the country’s main airport in a drive against money laundering, state media reported on Wednesday. The official Herald newspaper said the agents intercepted the money at Harare International airport on Tuesday as it was being smuggled back into the country.
The suggested scrapping of the floor-crossing law must be expanded to accommodate other electoral changes that will give voters a greater say in who their president will be, says United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa. Even the poorest countries in the world have done away with the system applied in South Africa, he said.
Thailand on Wednesday declared bird flu a national threat and vowed united efforts to tackle the deadly virus, which has claimed 16 lives since its first outbreak here in 2004. ”Bird flu is a national threat. If we fail to contain the outbreak of bird flu, it could spell disaster for our country,” Deputy Prime Minister Chidchai Vanasathidya told a meeting of about 260 local officials.
Detained Niger Delta warlord Mujahid Dokubo Asari on Wednesday demanded the immediate release of a German oil worker taken prisoner last week by militants, an associate said in a statement. Didone Shephard, an employee of oil service firm Bilfinger and Berger, was kidnapped along with his driver in the southern oil city of Port Harcourt last Thursday.
Fifty years after 20 000 women marched on Pretoria to protest against the pass laws, women are marching again. Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of the women’s march on the Union Buildings to protest against the extension of pass laws to black women. Thousands of people gathered at Strijdom Square on Wednesday morning.
In its glory days, the aluminum-and-steel hulk that sits outside the Alabama space museum was a training ground for astronauts who flew in the United States’s first space station. Today, the full-size training mock-up of Skylab is slowly rotting away after spending years on display at the US Space and Rocket Centre.