Somalia’s Minister of Constitutional and Federal Affairs Abdalla Derrow Issak was shot dead on Friday by an unknown gunman in the temporary seat of the transitional government, a relative said. Issak was killed as he left the mosque after Friday prayers in Baidoa, about 250km north-west of the capital, Mogadishu, the relative added.
Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika has suspended the head of the national graft-fighting agency just hours after the Southern African nation’s previous president was charged with stealing aid money. Wa Mutharika suspended Gustave Kaliwo, the head of the Anti-Corruption Bureau on ”disciplinary grounds”, a brief statement by the president’s office said.
A new tax withholding system for non-resident entertainers and sportspeople comes into effect on Tuesday, the South African Revenue Services (Sars) announced on Friday. Previously foreign entertainers and sportspeople were taxed the same as South African residents, but their short stays in the country made this impractical, Sars said.
Four people, including three police officers, are now known to have died and about 20 injured in rioting ahead of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) landmark elections, police said on Friday. Witnesses had earlier reported that one man had died in the violence, which occurred on Thursday outside a stadium where leading presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba was holding his final campaign rally.
The South African Cabinet has approved the establishment of the South African Space Agency as an institutional vehicle for the coordination and implementation of South Africa’s national space, science and technology programmes. In a statement on Friday the Cabinet said the agency would conduct ”long-term planning and implementation of space-related activities”.
Russia signed a ,9-billion arms deal with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela on Thursday, risking a confrontation with the United States, which has imposed an arms embargo on the South American country. The outspoken Venezuelan president also told reporters in Moscow that his country could develop its own nuclear programme.
Danes are the happiest people in the world, according to a new survey published on Friday that measures health, wealth, education, sense of identity and the aesthetic quality of the landscape. The survey follows another earlier this month that said the tiny South Pacific Ocean archipelago of Vanuatu was the happiest country on Earth.
The world’s largest diamond miner, De Beers, on Friday said it expects the outlook for the global rough diamond market for the second half of 2006 to be difficult. "It has been a testing time over the past six months," De Beers chairperson Nicky Oppenheimer said during a results teleconference.
The Airports Company South Africa (Acsa) has officially kick-started the construction of its largest facility to date — the R2-billion new central terminal building project at the Johannesburg International airport. The project was officially announced by Acsa CEO Monhla Hlahla at a sod-turning ceremony on Friday.
The retail price of all grades of petrol will increase by 31c per litre from Wednesday August 2, the Department of Minerals and Energy said on Friday. The wholesale price of diesel with a sulphur content of 0,05% and with a sulphur content of 0,005% will rise by 22c a litre and 25c a litre respectively on the same date.