Days after a radical cleric took charge of Somalia’s Islamic militia, a clan leader said the militia broke a ceasefire to seize a clan-held checkpoint outside the capital Mogadishu in an hour-long battle that killed six people. Tuesday’s fighting marked the first military movement since the militia signed an agreement last week to stop all military action.
The poorly equipped African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur is set to quit the troubled western Sudanese region by end of September due to a lack of funds, the AU’s security organ said on Tuesday. ”Whatever happens, our mandate ends on September 31 unless there are new developments,” South Africa’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said.
Shareholders in South African mobile giant MTN have approved plans to buy Dubai-listed Investcom in a deal to create the biggest mobile operator in Africa and the Middle East, MTN said on Wednesday. The ,5-billion (€4,3-billion) deal, first announced on May 2, was expected to lead to operations in 21 countries and serving nearly 30-million subscribers.
From September 1 everyone will be able to access their credit records free of charge once a year as part of legislation introduced under the National Credit Act, which came into force at the beginning of June this year. According to Michael Bouchier, managing director of Credit Health, it is vitally important for everyone to regularly check their credit record.
Western Cape police officials have admitted they are losing the battle to maintain law and order on Cape Town’s increasingly anarchic highways because the city is so underpoliced. The city has significantly fewer police personnel than Johannesburg: There is one policeman for every 2 300 Capetonians.
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Ghana’s World Cup dreams were shattered by reigning champions Brazil, but the Black Stars played well against some top football teams and served notice of what might happen on African soil in 2010. A three-week Cinderella run ended on Tuesday in a 3-0 second-round loss to Brazil.
If sport is a metaphor for life, then the passion and pain of the struggling West Indies cricket team is an apt reflection of the region that will welcome the 2007 ICC World Cup. Long gone are glory days when the islands in the sun churned out terrorising fast bowlers like the late Malcolm Marshall and master blasters like Viv Richards.
Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip launched on Wednesday in a bid to free a kidnapped soldier could escalate into a wider conflict, observers warned. The crisis has saddled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with the severest test of his premiership, but as dozens of tanks and troops poured into the southern Gaza Strip, officials were unable to say how or when the operation would end.
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It does not come much bigger than Germany vs Argentina — a match-up steeped in World Cup history that will bring the host country to a standstill on Friday. The quarterfinal clash in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium will evoke memories of 1986 and 1990, when West Germany and Argentina faced each other in successive World Cup finals.
Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is not just economics, but a matter of life or death, said Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to the United Nations secretary general. The MDGs, approved by almost every government in the world at the UN’s Millennium Summit in 2000, include such targets as halving extreme poverty, reversing the spread of HIV/Aids and reducing child mortality.