Landslides and flash floods caused by torrential rains have killed at least 14 people, including four children, living in tents in earthquake devastated areas of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, police said on Thursday. Ten people were killed during early morning prayers when a mudslide hit their tents at the foot of a mountain in Dadar Kadim.
The South African Reserve Bank raised its key repo rate, at which it lends money to commercial banks, by half a percentage point to 8% on Thursday and warned that the inflation outlook has deteriorated in the past few weeks. This means the prime interest rate is to rise to 11,5%. Mike Schussler, economist at T-Sec, commented: ”It was as the markets expected.”
New outbreaks of bird flu in Thailand and Laos are fanning fears the disease is flaring up again in Asia, although concerns the virus was mutating in Indonesia have subsided. In Vietnam, which has not reported any outbreak of the H5N1 virus in poultry in the last seven months, a 35-year-old man was hospitalised in the southern province of Kien Giang.
Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi on Thursday refused to resign despite a mass exodus of Cabinet ministers and mounting criticism over the deployment of Ethiopian troops to protect his feeble 18-month-old administration. Government spokesperson Abdirahman Mohamed Nur Dinari said Gedi was instead working to replace the 36 ministers who have quit in the past week.
Fraud and theft made up the bulk of financial misconduct cases reported in the 2004/2005 financial year, the Public Service Commission said on Thursday. The highest number of cases were reported by national departments, which had 39% of the 513 cases of financial misconduct. The Free State and Eastern Cape reported 10% each.
Burundi has arrested an eighth person in a suspected plot to overthrow the Central African nation’s government in a bloody coup, an intelligence source said on Thursday. The authorities say they have evidence that former high-ranking politicians and a dissident rebel leader — all arrested this week — planned to kill President Pierre Nkurunziza in June with military support.
Labour union Solidarity welcomed on Thursday a pay offer made by Kumba resources as a ”fair step in the right direction” but was still awaiting a mandate from its members. Spokesperson Reint Dykema said: ”The 7,75% pay hike increase for higher earners and 8,75% for lower categories made on Wednesday would simply maintain employees at the level at which they were before.
A suicide car-bomb attack aimed at a convoy of Nato troops in southern Afghanistan killed at least 20 civilians on Thursday, a provincial police chief said. The attack in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar province occurred south-west of its provincial capital near where two separate roadside bombs killed a Canadian soldier and injured four others earlier in the day.
Unless alternative sources of funding are found, the high demands on the National Skills Fund are threatening the future of small, micro and medium enterprises in need of skills and employment-creating mechanisms, said Minister Labour Membathisi Mdladlana.
Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa has won applause from foreign donors for his economic and anti-corruption record. But while Zambia has avoided the kind of strife that has plagued some of its neighbours, that hasn’t made its politics any more predictable. Mwanawasa is now seeking a second term in a September 28 poll whose outcome is far from certain.