While schools are under pressure to distribute condoms at schools, not one of the 12 African countries represented at a high-level meeting in Durban is doing so and most education officials felt this would be inappropriate. A number felt that schools should nonetheless help sexually active secondary-school students to get access to condoms.
Teachers will hold marches around the country on Thursday to protest against government’s offer of a 5,5% salary increase, the SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) said. At a press conference in Johannesburg on Tuesday, Sadtu secretary general Thulas Nxesi said the union was confused by the government’s offer made at the bargaining chamber on Monday.
A top British Foreign Office official will visit North Korea in September, the first British minister to go to the secretive communist nation, the Foreign Office said on Tuesday. Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell said he would meet with a North Korean counterpart, Paek Nam Sun, and other senior figures, to discuss issues including North Korea’s nuclear programme and human rights.
Agriculture and defence ministers from 16 African countries met on Tuesday to marshal their forces for an assault on swarms of locusts whose incursions in West Africa are the worst in more than a decade and could produce widespread food shortages. Tuesday’s session was the latest in a series of meetings to battle the locusts.
The FBI on Tuesday took over the probe into the weekend bombing of a United States security firm in Kabul as the Afghan capital braced for further potential attacks in the run-up to the country’s landmark presidential election. At least nine people were killed and dozens injured in Sunday’s blast.
The Pharmaceutical Society of South Africa will appeal last week’s dismissal of its court challenge to new medicine pricing regulations, the society said on Tuesday. ”The society will exhaust all avenues to ensure the survival of pharmaceutical service delivery in South Africa,” a statement read.
Malawi has formulated a plan to clear abandoned landmines and other unexploded ordnance from areas along its border with Mozambique. The National Mine Action office said on Monday that authorities have finalised a plan to conduct ”a detailed survey and map areas that are dangerous [infested with mines]”.
Official opposition leader Tony Leon led nine Democratic Alliance (DA) councillors on a march from the Cape Town metropolitan council on Tuesday to protest at the way in which the Big Bay tender — a prime 14ha piece of real estate near Blaauwberg — has been handled.
The Texan wife of Mark Thatcher, who is currently under house arrest in South Africa following accusations he helped finance a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea, arrived in Britain on Tuesday morning. Diane Thatcher swept through London’s Heathrow airport surrounded by police and refused to say why she had left South Africa.
SA mulls Thatcher’s extradition
Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic began his long-delayed defence against charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity before a United Nations court on Tuesday, denouncing the accusations as ”unscrupulous lies”. Milosevic intends to cross-examine more than 1Â 600 witnesses.