About 7 000 people have been left homeless by raging flood waters in southern Ethiopia after heavy rain caused rivers to burst their banks in the Horn of Africa’s Oromia state, official media reported on Monday. At least one person was swept away and killed by the water along with 23 livestock on Monday.
Former Truth and Reconciliation Commission chairperson Archbishop Desmond Tutu led talks to broker peace between two feuding factions of the three-million-member St John Apostolic Faith Mission Church on Tuesday. ”Lives have been threatened [during the feud],” said South African Council of Churches spokesperson Joe Mdhlela.
A rare Chinese tiger born in a zoo in China and sent to South Africa to be trained for a life in the wild has died, threatening a wildlife protection programme, an animal rights group said on Tuesday. Hope, a four-year-old male, died of pneumonia and heart failure on Saturday at the Laohu Valley Reserve in South Africa.
Oil futures held above a barrel on Tuesday amid lingering global supply concerns despite resumed crude flows from Ecuador and Nigeria. The rise came amid expectations that Wednesday’s United States petroleum inventories will show declines in both crude and gasoline stocks with little indication that high prices are slowing demand.
South Africa’s Department of Minerals and Energy on Tuesday announced that it has short-listed five parties — out of 11 applicants — for new peaking-power generation. The five applicants short-listed are the AES Consortium, the Inkanyezi Consortium, the International Power Consortium, Tata-J&J Consortium and the YTL Consortium.
Billowing smoke forced the evacuation of 157 guests at Cape Town’s St George’s hotel on Tuesday morning. About a third of them had to be treated for smoke inhalation. It is suspected the fire was started by an electrical short where the main power supply from the council linked to the complex’s transformer-driven private electricity supply.
Troops hacked their way into a barricaded synagogue in the heart of biblical Israel on Tuesday as they evacuated defiant settlers from the northern West Bank after the historic pull-out of Jews from the Gaza Strip. Security forces also cleared several dozen religious students who had taken refuge inside a seminary.
A 30-year-old father was arrested in Doornkop for allegedly raping his eight-month-old daughter, Soweto police said on Tuesday. Sergeant Richard Munyai said the baby girl’s mother noticed her daughter had allegedly been raped while she was bathing her and changing her nappy on Monday night.
The culling of an estimated 20 000 pigs in the Eastern Cape started in Idutywa on Monday, after an outbreak of swine fever hit the province. At least 3 500 emerging farmers’ pigs have been affected by the virus, and strict control measures to stop the spread of the disease have been set in place.
The JSE Securities Exchange (JSE) was weaker in noon trade on Tuesday, dragged down by a stronger rand. However, dealers said that some strength could possibly be seen later in the day after the market digested better-than-expected gross domestic product data released on Tuesday morning.