Durban is being touted as the next city to host the 2016 Olympic Games. Launching the city’s Durban Beach Africa festival on Wednesday evening, the city’s deputy mayor, Logie Naidoo, said: ”We believe that the 2016 Olympic Games should come to Durban. Cape Town has had its chance. It’s time for Durban to bid for this biggest of events.”
A protracted strike by security guards will hopefully end with the signing of a new pay deal at noon on Thursday. South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) secretary general Randall Howard said on Wednesday that the deal would be accepted.
Foreign landowners in Zimbabwe will be allowed to appeal against the seizure of their farms in court, a government minister said on Wednesday in what appeared to be a bid to calm outside investors. State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa said amendments to the Constitution that block white farmers from such appeals did not apply to farms protected by government-to-government agreements.
China expressed willingness on Wednesday to restrict its textile exports to South Africa, but no firm deal was on the table at the conclusion of talks between Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and President Thabo Mbeki. The two leaders agreed that concerns over the alleged flooding of the local clothing and textile market would not derail otherwise strong ties, Wen told reporters in Cape Town.
A surge in prices of basic commodities and a sharp slide by the Zimbabwe dollar on the parallel market in past weeks could undo a fresh initiative by President Robert Mugabe to halt the economy’s free fall, further putting pressure on his grip on power, analysts said.
An angry United States President George Bush rounded on the two remaining members of Washington’s ”axis of evil” yesterday, as he dismissed ”absurd” suggestions that the US presents the greatest threat to world stability. At a summit with the European Union in Vienna, Bush made clear that he believes Iran and North Korea pose the most serious danger when he warned them not to test his patience.
Hamas has made a major political climbdown by agreeing to sections of a document that recognise Israel’s right to exist and a negotiated two-state solution, according to Palestinian leaders. In a bitter struggle for power, Hamas is bowing to an ultimatum from the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, to endorse the document drawn up by Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails.
The war crimes trial of the former president of Liberia Charles Taylor could start in The Hague in January next year, a court official in the Sierra Leonean capital Freetown said on Wednesday. Harpinder Athwal, a special assistant to the court’s prosecutor, said the prosecution had handed over 32 000 pages of evidence to Taylor’s defence team.
This month sees the launch of the revived news agency of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) — a move that hopes to put more information into global circulation, but which also highlights problems in African initiatives. The NAM service comes into being seven months after a meeting of its member countries’ information ministers.
The location of Alyn Hospital on the outskirts of Jerusalem is so idyllic it could be out of the famous tale, Heidi. Nestled on a hilltop enclosed in pine-groves and wild daffodils, the sound of birdsong and children’s giggles allow one momentarily to forget the reality inside the hospital’s walls — the damaged and deformed children who are its patients.