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Police briefly sealed off part of central London on Tuesday after smoke was seen billowing from a double-decker bus, but lifted the alert after nothing alarming was found, a spokesperson said. The incident reflected jitters in the British capital since July 7 bombings that left 56 dead, followed by failed copycat attacks two weeks later.
Valuable South African cultural treasures, including art works, firearms, furniture and archaeological artefacts, are being smuggled out of the country for foreign collectors. According to South African Heritage Resources CEO Phakamani Buthelezi, the value of objects taken ”ranges between R500 to R50 000, even to R100 000”.
Violence broke out for a second day in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on Tuesday after a morning of tense calm, a day after 36 people were killed in furious riots sparked by the death of Sudanese vice-president and former southern rebel leader John Garang. ”Where is the government? Where are the police?” asked a newspaper editor.
A Durban North couple alleged to have conned investors out of R20-million to R25-million were arrested by the commercial crime unit on Tuesday afternoon. The unit’s Captain Dean Misra said the investigation began a year-and-a-half ago when the Financial Services Board lodged a complaint against the couple.
The South African Municipal Workers’ Union will embark on another strike next week, the union said on Tuesday. Meanwhile, figures gleaned from a reply in Parliament from the minister of provincial and local government show that the average municipal manager in South Africa’s 47 district municipalities earns R642Â 376 a year.
The aid agency Médécins sans Frontières (MSF) on Tuesday partly shut down operations in the north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) because of ”limitless” violence, leaving more than 100 000 displaced people virtually without aid.
Squatters in Marlboro, Johannesburg, have vowed to fight any new attempts to evict them from the abandoned factories where they have lived in squalor for as long as seven years. They held off the sheriff’s ”Red Ants” workers on Monday with burning barricades at the intersections of roads leading to the area.
Following a day of deadly riots in the streets of Khartoum sparked by the death in a helicopter crash of former rebel leader John Garang, Sudan on Tuesday was plunged back into uncertainty.
The <i>Mail & Guardian Online</i> is South Africa’s biggest standalone online newspaper, according to internet readership figures for June, released by the Online Publishers Association and ratings company Nielsen//Netratings this week. In June this year, the <i>M&G Online</i> attracted a record 298 819 unique users.