The first round of voting for Italy’s new president ended in failure on Monday night after Silvio Berlusconi and his allies ruled out a compromise candidate put forward by the centre-left, the veteran former minister Giorgio Napolitano. Berlusconi’s supporters rallied behind Gianni Letta, a long-standing associate of the tycoon.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, sent a letter on Monday to United States President George Bush — the first such communication for 27 years — offering an analysis of global issues and ”new ways of getting out of the current delicate situation in the world”.
A warrant for the arrest of Pretoria advocate Dirk Prinsloo was issued on Tuesday after he failed to turn up for his trial in the high court on charges ranging from soliciting children to rape and fraud. Judge Mahomed Ismail issued a warrant for Prinsloo’s arrest after hearing that Prinsloo had phoned his legal representatives to tell them ”he was not returning from Russia”.
South African Airways (SAA) was likely to report its financials as a separate company for the 2006/07 financial year and its separation from its parent company Transnet was well under way, Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin said on Tuesday.
European intelligence services have warned Morocco that terrorists are planning attacks on political, business and tourist targets in the North African country, the Al Ahdath Al Maghribia newspaper said on Tuesday. ”Moroccan security authorities received a message from their European counterparts warning of [potential] attacks,” the newspaper said, quoting ”well-informed sources”.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.