Combating organised crime and illegal migration were identified on Tuesday as two areas of potential cooperation between South Africa and Mexico. Organised crime is a challenge both countries face, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said in Pretoria after hosting his Mexican counterpart for political and economic talks.
King Mswati III, Africa’s last absolute monarch, refused to sign the country’s new Constitution and ordered Parliament on Tuesday to hold a joint session to reconsider sections on religion and taxing his family. The draft Constitution, adopted by Parliament last month, is the product of eight years of consultations.
Armed British police took up positions on Tuesday outside a house in Leeds, north-east England, scene of anti-terrorist raids earlier in the day. Officers were seen outside the property minutes after what was reported to be a controlled explosion, Britain’s domestic Press Association said.
Prince Albert II on Tuesday formally assumed the throne of Monaco, the Mediterranean statelet that has become indelibly linked with Hollywood glamour and jet-set wealth. The ceremony came less than a week after Albert confirmed that he had fathered the child of a French-Togolese former air hostess.
Discussions on expanding the membership of the United Nations Security Council should not eclipse the need for pursuing more general UN reforms, deputy foreign minister Aziz Pahad said on Tuesday. Pahad was speaking after hosting his Mexican counterpart, Maria de Lourdes Aranda Bezaury, for bilateral political and economic discussions.
At least 21 people, many of them children, were killed on Tuesday when armed raiders attacked a rival clan’s village in a long-running dispute over water and pasture in eastern Kenya, residents said. Members of the Borana clan invaded the remote village of Turbi, about 580km north-east of Nairobi, early on Tuesday.
A fire consumed several floors of a busy Costa Rican hospital before dawn on Tuesday, killing at least 15 patients, Costa Rican officials said. Nurses broke out windows trying to escape, and many patients fled the hospital on their own. The fire broke out on the fourth or fifth floor of the Calderon Guardia hospital.
Up to 4,2-million Malawians face food shortages in the wake of a drought that reduced the poor Southern African country’s staple maize output by 24%, a report to assess Malawi’s harvest said on Tuesday. ”Malawi will require food aid of some 271 970 tonnes until the next harvest,” the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee said.
A Bangladeshi man and four accomplices broke down in tears as a court sentenced them to hang for the murder of a 14-year-old girl who rejected an offer of marriage, officials said on Tuesday. Spurned suitor Imarul, who uses one name, and the four men were convicted on Monday for killing the girl whose family spurned his offer of marriage.
British officials pored over evidence including 2Â 500 closed-circuit television tapes as they investigated the London terrorist attacks. In Spain, a government official cast doubt on British press reports that a key suspect was the mastermind of last year’s Madrid railways bombings.