Police have killed the leader of an al-Qaeda-inspired militant group who was wanted for last month’s Sinai bombings that killed 21 people, said the local North Sinai police command. Nasser Khamis el-Mallahi, the leader of Egypt’s Monotheism and Jihad, was shot dead and his accomplice captured in a gun battle in an olive grove on Tuesday morning.
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Former South African deputy president Jacob Zuma dismissed suggestions on Tuesday that President Thabo Mbeki had played a part in his rape trial and upcoming corruption trial. ”No, I have not said anything in that direction. I would not want to discuss that matter,” he told the Cape Talk 567 radio station on Tuesday afternoon.
The man likely to replace Tony Blair as prime minister said on Tuesday he believes Blair will arrange a dignified and orderly exit. ”I think we can prove to the world that we can do these things in a unified and proper way,” Treasury chief Gordon Brown said in an interview on the morning television programme GMTV.
Israeli settlers living in unauthorised West Bank outposts are prepared to leave if they are offered government-sanctioned alternatives in the area, the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot reported on Tuesday. The conditional offer marks a departure from the settlers’ longheld policy of fighting all West Bank evacuations.
A Mozambican national spent more than a year awaiting trial for rape and attempted murder in South Africa, while forensic evidence clearing him had been available four months after his arrest. Charges of rape and attempted murder were withdrawn against Lui Emmanuel Sipoge in the Pretoria Regional Court on Tuesday.
Japan will have to adjust its eating habits with the implementation of a 50% price increase on disposable chopsticks imposed by Chinese suppliers before exports cease altogether, a media report said on Tuesday. In March, China’s government imposed a ban on the disposable eating utensils as a measure to protect forests.
About 2,7-million individual tax payers will be able to submit their tax returns through the internet for the first time in South Africa this year. ”It takes out a lot of the hassle factor,” Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel said on Tuesday. The new service will be available from June 1.
South Africa’s Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour has reported figures indicating that the number of prisoner escapes from correctional facilities has been on a downward trend in the post-apartheid period. Just 120 prisoners escaped in 2005 and 30 escaped in the first three months of this year.
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South African former deputy president Jacob Zuma apologised to the nation on Tuesday for having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman, a day after he was acquitted of rape. ”I should have been more cautious and more responsible,” said Zuma in an interview to SABC radio. ”I erred on this issue and on this, I apologise.”
The retrial is due to start on Thursday in Tripoli of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who have been held in jail since 1999 on charges of infecting Libyan children with HIV/Aids. Since death sentences against the defendants were quashed on Christmas Day, relations been Tripoli and Sofia have been strained by the publication in Bulgaria of cartoons of Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi.