Former president Nelson Mandela has taken a neutral public stance on reports that businessman Cyril Ramaphosa has his eye on the presidency of the African National Congress. ”Madiba will remain entirely impartial in this matter,” his spokesperson Zelda la Grange said on Monday, referring to Mandela by his clan name.
Cape Town’s metro police chief described newspaper allegations of corrupt practices at metro police offices in Gordon’s Bay as ”unfounded”. ”It is not as bad as the [newspaper] report. Eighty percent of the allegations in the report are unfounded,” metro chief Bongani Jonas said on Monday.
The United Kingdom hopes a peace plan for Lebanon can emerge within days that could lead to a cessation of hostilities, Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Monday. But he said details need to be worked out for an international force before a ceasefire could be declared that would hold on both sides.
The collapse of global trade talks is bad news for Africa, condemning the world’s poorest continent to an uncertain future of high tariffs and lagging competitiveness, officials and experts said on Monday. World Trade Organisation chief Pascal Lamy was expected to formally announce the end of the Doha round of talks on Monday.
The director general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Pascal Lamy, said on Monday that he was recommending an indefinite suspension of the troubled five-year round of global trade talks. "The only course of action I can recommend is to suspend the negotiations across the round as a whole," Lamy told journalists, without setting a date for restarting the talks.
A new body to curb the misuse of African diamonds has been established, a Belgian consulting group and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) said on Monday. They said the Diamond Producers of Africa (DPA) initiative came after extensive consultations on the development of a common platform for African diamond-producing countries.
Representatives of warring groups in Israel, Lebanon and Palestine should meet in South Africa to negotiate an end to hostilities between them, the South African Council of Churches said on Monday. Spokesperson Jo Mdhlela said the council is calling on the South African government to help broker peace in the escalating Middle East crisis.
The emotional, psychiatric and neurological effects of HIV/Aids should be made public and addressed, the South African Society of Psychiatrists (Sasop) said on Monday. ”Both the public and people treating HIV infection should be aware of the mental manifestations of HIV infection. These range from minor intellectual difficulties to serious memory problems,” Sasop said.
The death toll in China from Tropical Storm Bilis has risen to 612, with another 208 people missing, state media said on Monday in another major reassessment of the impact of the devastating floods. Xinhua news agency, citing the nation’s disaster-relief commission, gave no reason for the sudden jump in the casualty numbers from the storm.
Formula One world champion Fernando Alonso is confident he can stop Michael Schumacher’s winning run in his Ferrari rival’s home German Grand Prix this weekend. ”I am feeling very optimistic. We had a strong first half of the season, and the key thing now is to keep going and finalise the job,” the Spaniard said in a Renault team preview to Sunday’s race at Hockenheim.