The 62 South African alleged mercenaries in Zimbabwe are only expected to arrive in the country on Thursday, their lawyer Alwyn Griebenow said on Wednesday. ”If everything goes according to plan we will leave [Zimbabwe] at 9am tomorrow [Thursday] morning,” he said from Harare.
Six members of a family have been found dead in their sprawling ranch home in southern California by sheriff’s deputies responding to an emergency call from the house on Tuesday. The bodies of three adults and three children were found by police who had gone to the ranch after the early morning call to a 911 operator.
South African consumer confidence has increased by almost 30% in a year according to the results of a survey released on Wednesday. The SA index rose from 64,4 in February 2004 to 83,5 in February this year. The survey looks at consumers’ perception of economic conditions for the next six months.
Bombings at two locations in northern Iraq killed at least 30 people on Wednesday at an army recruiting centre in Hawijah and 28 near a police station in Tikrit, officials said. A remote-controlled car bomb was used in Tikrit, while the attack in Hawijah was believed to be the work of a suicide bomber with an explosives belt.
Industrial brand management company Barloworld on Wednesday reported headline earnings per share of 372 cents for the six months ended March 31, from 374 cents for the same period a year ago. The headline earnings per share were affected by a number of non-operational factors.
After opening weaker in line with world markets, the JSE Securities Exchange had crept into positive territory just after noon on Wednesday. Dealers said that positive local sentiment stemming from the Barclays-Absa deal and the rand coming off its best levels were helping the local bourse.
South Africa’s official opposition Democratic Alliance is alarmed at reports of a proposal being discussed in the South African Cabinet for a "super-ministry" to oversee the economy, calling it an "outdated idea that will result in the overcentralisation of power and more bureaucratic red tape".
The United Nations’s top emergency relief official on Tuesday pressed the Security Council to take on the crisis in northern Uganda, where a brutal rebellion against the government has been raging since 1988. ”We’ve had atrocious massacres and mutilations of civilians in the past few weeks again,” Jan Egeland told reporters.
About 200 deaf people staged a protest on Tuesday in the northern Nigerian city of Kano against what they called government neglect of their plight. Under the banner of their organisation, the Deaf Youth Association, they called for special sign language interpreters for news and other programmes broadcast on state-run television.
Even developed countries are not prepared for the possibility that the virulent avian flu could develop into a full-scale pandemic, the director of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, Professor Barry Schoub, said on Tuesday. He said the question is not if, but when, the next flu pandemic will hit the world.