Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing on Tuesday called on Japan’s leaders to stop visiting a controversial Tokyo war shrine, comparing their actions to the worship of Germany’s Nazis after World War II. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has made five visits to the Yasukuni Shrine since taking office in 2001.
The JSE was sharply lower in noon trade on Tuesday, knocked by weakness in commodity prices and global markets. A softer rand did little to help the local bourse. By 11.49am, the all-share index slipped 1,6%. Resources slumped 2,9%, with the gold and platinum mining indices plunging 3,65% and 4,46% respectively.
Thousands of angry Kenyans, including prominent opposition politicians, paraded through the country’s main cities on Tuesday protesting a heavy-handed police raid on the second largest media group. ”We are demonstrating in order to protect press freedom in Kenya. Press freedom in Kenya is under siege,” said former roads minister Raila Odinga.
Attempts by Johannesburg City Council to sell the Huddle Park wetland in Linksfield, to an empowerment consortium for development before the completion of a thorough environmental impact assessment process may have dire environmental consequences for the residents of Alexandra township.
The South African Chamber of Business’s (Sacob) Business Confidence Index (BCI) declined to 100,1 in February 2006, Sacob said in a statement on Tuesday.
”The decline of three points between January and February 2006 is the highest monthly decline in the BCI since October 2004, ” Sacob said.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said here on Monday she hoped international sanctions on the country’s forestry and diamonds sectors would soon be lifted. Once one of Africa’s most prosperous nations with abundant timber, rubber and mineral wealth, Liberia lies in ruin after more than 14 years of civil war.
When the call is close, the pro tennis tours want to take another look. The ATP and WTA Tours have decided to use television replays starting with the Nasdaq-100 Open in Key Biscayne, Florida, in two weeks, officials said on Monday. This year’s United States Open will be the first Grand Slam event to review disputed calls on videotape.
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Power-broker Patricia de Lille’s Independent Democrats (ID) wants to convince Cape Town’s two major political parties, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the African National Congress (ANC) to work together in a unity government in Cape Town and 23 other Western Cape towns.
A culture of impunity still reigns in Sudan’s western Darfur region, and a special Sudanese court set up to try perpetrators of war crimes in the three-year-old Darfur conflict has failed to prosecute any suspected war criminals, according to a United Nations envoy in Khartoum.
The Kenyan government on Monday blamed increasing incidents of poaching and illegal trade in bush meat in the country on a searing drought that has put millions of people across East Africa at risk of famine. As the government and relief agencies scramble to save human populations from starvation, wildlife authorities have warned that poachers are targeting weakened wildlife.