The case against six people accused of murdering three laundry workers was struck off the roll at the Vereeniging Magistrate’s Court on Monday due to insufficient evidence against the accused. ”The big problem is that the case has been dealt with in a very, very amateurish way,” the magistrate said.
Car bombings and shootings in Baghdad on Monday left 15 dead and 100 wounded as Washington stepped up pressure for Shi’ite premier-designate Jawad al-Maliki to form a government and halt Iraq’s slide into a civil war. Insurgents set off seven car bombs, including a double car bombing at a Baghdad university, security officials said.
The African Union will end talks among warring parties in Sudan’s Darfur region by April 30 if the Khartoum government and rebel factions fail to agree to a peace deal, a senior mediator said. Sam Ibok, head of the AU team mediating peace negotiations, said on Sunday his team was still working toward a United Nations-backed deadline to achieve a final peace agreement by the end of the month.
Nepal’s pro-democracy movement called for a final push to remove the country’s monarch tomorrow as demonstrators clashed with armed police, defying curfews, teargas and bullets on the edge of the capital. In Gongabu leaders from the political parties appealed to a crowd of thousands to regroup peacefully as King Gyanendra had ”only two days left now”.
The head of the Polisario Front on Sunday claimed a report by the United Nations chief Kofi Annan amounted to a ”plot against the Sahrawi cause” and threatened a returned to ”armed struggle” if it is approved by the Security Council. Mohamed Abdelaziz, head of the Algerian-backed Polisario Front, said Annan’s report was a ”plot against the legitimate right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination”.
Rival militiamen battled for control of a district in the lawless Somali capital on Sunday and at least seven people were killed, medical workers said. Fighting began after militias loyal to an alliance of warlords-turned-Cabinet ministers and businessmen deployed in a house in the Hamarweyne district of central Mogadishu.
The JSE was marginally firmer at midday on Monday, with heavyweight resources stocks keeping its head above water. Losses were seen in financials and industrials, however, and decliners outnumbered advancers on the all-share index by about three to two. By 12.10pm, the all-share index was up a marginal 0,04%.
A hiatus in South Africa’s biodiversity legislation, dealing with a proposed national electronic permit system, is inadvertently aiding a run by traffickers on the country’s endangered wildlife. According to Traffic, the world’s largest wildlife trade monitoring organisation, global wildlife trade was huge, with an annual turnover estimated at billions of dollars.
A hugely destructive cyclone described as a ”perfect” storm bore down on Monday on the isolated northern Australian city of Darwin, devastated by a killer cyclone in 1974. Packing winds of up to 350kph, Tropical Cyclone Monica was moving relentlessly towards Darwin as it turned towards the coast from the Arafura Sea, the government’s weather bureau said.
Famed test pilot and aviation pioneer Scott Crossfield, the first man to travel at twice the speed of sound, died when his plane crashed in the American state of Georgia, the Civil Air Patrol said on Thursday. He was 84. Crossfield was flying from the southern state of Alabama to Virginia when his Cessna disappeared from radar.