The deputy president of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) has apologised after raising his views on who should lead the ANC in 2007. Reuben Mohlaloga apologised for raising his views outside the working structures of the ANCYL, league president Fikile Mbalula told reporters in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
Japanese people hoping their bank accounts carry a bit more cash could see their hopes come true with an automated teller machine that doubles as a slot machine, a regional bank said on Wednesday. Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank will on August 8 introduce slot games that run during the wait as cash machines process transactions.
Rescue workers have pulled more bodies from the wreckage of a five-storey building that collapsed on Monday as a construction team was sleeping inside, and the death toll is now at eight, a Red Cross official said on Wednesday. More corpses may still be lying in the debris, said Chika Onah.
Poor rains and high crop prices have left more than 18-million people with serious food shortages in 10 African countries, a food-security monitoring group said. The food shortages are concentrated in Ethiopia, where more than half of the 18-million affected people live, the group’s report said.
Chances of saving four Danish divers and their British-Canadian scuba-diving instructor are diminishing fast, four days after they went missing off Zanzibar, police and Denmark’s ambassador said on Wednesday. A Danish woman, her two sons, an additional Dane and their instructor failed to surface on Saturday.
South African Airways (SAA) refuses to increase its salary offer of 5%, the company said on Wednesday afternoon. ”The management of SAA does not intend moving from its offer of a 5% salary increase, while the unions are demanding an 8% increase,” said SAA spokesperson Sarah Uys.
South Africa’s Competition Tribunal on Wednesday conditionally approved the Media24, Lexshell 496 Investments and the Natal Witness Printing and Publishing Company merger. The transaction is subject to several conditions, including that Media24 must divest of all direct or indirect interests in Lincroft Books.
James N Aparo, an illustrator for DC Comics for more than 30 years who drew Batman, the Green Arrow and other action heroes, has died. Aparo, who grew up in New Britain, brought characters to life in his home studio in Southington, corresponding with DC Comics through the mail.
South African citizens do not enjoy an automatic right to diplomatic protection, the Pretoria High Court ruled on Wednesday. Judge Essop Patel dismissed an application by a mining group seeking diplomatic protection arising from the cancellation of its diamond leases by the Lesotho government in 1992.
A statement in the name of a group that claimed responsibility for the London bombings threatened to launch ”a bloody war” on the capitals of European countries that do not remove their troops from Iraq within a month.