Zimbabwean police late on Wednesday released an opposition lawmaker and at least 16 of his constituents who were arrested earlier in the day for walking to work to protest chronic fuel shortages, their lawyer said. Gilbert Shoko and opposition supporters were arrested as they walked to the city centre, their lawyer said.
Cape High Court Judge President John Hlophe has dismissed as ”utter rubbish” allegations that he racially abused a top white lawyer and told him to go back to The Netherlands. Hlophe said on Wednesday night he had no idea where the allegations came from. ”It is absolute rubbish,” he said.
Scorpions detectives belonged in the police and prosecutors with the National Prosecuting Authority, a commission of inquiry heard on Wednesday. South African Police Service advocate Philip Jacobs said prosecutors should remain true to their role while investigators have to fall under the command and control of the police.
The White House has been dialling numbers it normally only needs at election time. Those numbers belong to Christian conservatives, also known as the ”base” for their unstinting support of the president. That base has been split in two by President George Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers as the new judge on the Supreme Court.
Britain and Iran clashed openly on Wednesday night after a senior British official directly accused Tehran of supplying Iraqi insurgents with sophisticated roadside bombs that have killed eight British soldiers and two security guards since May. The bombs have created havoc among British forces in southern Iraq.
The United States has warned Nicaraguan politicians that millions of dollars of aid will be withheld from the country if any moves are made to oust the President, Enrique Bolaños. The US deputy secretary of state is in the capital, Managua, this week to head off the possibility of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega returning to power.
Scientists have recreated the 1918 Spanish flu virus, one of the deadliest ever to emerge, to the alarm of many researchers who fear it presents a serious security risk. Undisclosed quantities of the virus are being held in a high-security government laboratory in Atlanta, Georgia, after a nine-year effort to rebuild the agent.
Royal Bafokeng Finance, an investment arm of the Royal Bafokeng Nation, is to acquire the entire shareholding in Fraser Alexander, one of South Africa’s oldest services groups to the mining and industrial sectors, with operations in Southern Africa and Chile.
Germany’s two main parties cleared the way on Wednesday for a grand left-right coalition to break the country’s political deadlock and said they would meet within a day to thrash out who would lead it. Officials in Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats said a leadership summit would be held on Thursday.
Spain’s announcement that it plans to build a third fence to separate its enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla from Morocco has drawn loud criticism while giving rise to many questions. The most frequently asked question is whether the measures designed to dissuade desperately poor people from sub-Saharan Africa from attempting to enter Europe will be effective.