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This week, the M&G brings you — in full — the story we had to black out a fortnight ago after being gagged write Stefaans Brümmer and Sam Sole.
One of the unions involved in the Metrorail pay protest called off its strike on Thursday, with the second waiting for word from its members on whether to continue the strike. The United Association of South Africa said it called off its strike on Thursday morning and asked its members to return to work.
Kenyan police on Thursday re-arrested a Muslim man suspected of terrorism links just hours after he was acquitted on murder charges in connection with the 2002 al-Qaeda-linked bombing of an Israeli hotel near the southern port city of Mombasa, his lawyer said. He was arrested as he was about to leave prison.
Unless Britons are charged for the distance they drive, they could eventually face unmanageable traffic jams on major roads, the nation’s transport secretary said on Thursday. Transport Secretary Alistair Darling said Britain needs to implement the world’s first satellite-based system to charge motorists for every kilometre they drive.
About 40 000 prostitutes will offer their services to football fans at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, according to experts. Cologne and Dortmund, two of the host cities for the World Cup, have even erected a number of wooden ”sex huts” for the football showpiece, with condoms and showers at hand.
The City of Johannesburg does not have a billing crisis, but a service crisis, its finance department said on Thursday. ”It is not really accurate to say we have a billing crisis, but rather to say we have a customer-service crisis,” said Roland Hunter, acting head of the city’s revenue shared services centre.
The prime interest rate is to remain unchanged at 10,5% after the South African Reserve Bank opted on Thursday to keep the repo rate, at which it lends money to commercial banks, at 7%. This was announced by Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni on Thursday after the bank’s monetary policy committee meeting.
Russian police who smelled something amiss when the owners of a Moscow apartment failed to pay their bills found four mummified corpses and a fridge full of out-of-date food. Investigators established that the bodies were those of four family members, who died at intervals over a five-year period.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe opened a session of Parliament on Thursday with a speech defending an unpopular police crackdown on street traders and shack dwellers.He said the clean-up campaign is necessary to ”restore sanity and order” to urban areas.