It is shocking that the investigation into the scandal of the magnitude of the parliamentary travel-voucher fraud scam should have taken 20 months and still be nowhere near conclusion, Democratic Alliance Chief Whip Douglas Gibson said on Tuesday. He was speaking in the National Assembly during a special debate on the issue.
Olympic city Athens was jolted by a small earthquake on Tuesday but there were no reports of any damage. The tremor was measured at 4,5 on the Richter scale. Two brief jolts were felt at 3.38pm local time, with an epicentre about 70km north of the Greek capital. Greece is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world.
A British man put a flight from Norway in danger after setting fire to a pornographic magazine under his seat, a court was told on Tuesday. David Mason used a cigarette lighter to ignite torn-out pages from the magazine, which he had bought himself, saying later he had been ”offended” by them.
Parliament started to suspect that something was wrong with the travel-voucher system at the end of 2002 when its finance staff realised that one MP, whose home was in Vrede, was "supposedly" repeatedly travelling to Umtata, said Speaker Baleka Mbete on Tuesday during the debate on the so-called Travelgate scam.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=121014">Scam probe ‘taking too long'</a>
Judgement was reserved on Tuesday in an urgent High Court application by Disney Enterprises to set aside an attachment order against more than 240 of its trademarks registered in South Africa. The trademarks include well-known images such as Donald Duck and Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
South African media group Caxton and CTP Publishers and Printers (Caxton) reported a 15,6% increase in diluted headline earnings per share from 64 cents to 74 cents for the year ended June. The group on Tuesday said it has declared a dividend of 35 cents per share compared with 30 cents for the previous comparable period.
Noisy, low-flying helicopters, the bane of weekend walkers seeking a little peace and tranquillity within the borders of the Table Mountain National Park, may soon be a thing of the past. Draft legislation currently before Parliament aims to limit the height at which an aircraft can fly over the park, or any other protected area in South Africa, ”to a level of 2 500 feet above the highest point”.
On Sunday evening Karim al-Zuheiri was watching Iraq’s footballers play Australia at the Olympics. There had been no power for weeks in Najaf’s old city where he lives; and so — ignoring the shellfire from the nearby Imam Ali shrine — Zuheiri hooked up his television to a car battery.
The former Zimbabwean Cabinet minister Eddison Zvobgo, who has died aged 68 after a long illness, was a founder of the ruling Zanu-PF party. But though a spokesperson referred to his death as a great loss to country and party, Zvobgo had become a controversial figure in recent years, having led some challenges within Zanu-PF to the autocratic rule of President Robert Mugabe.
United States President George Bush stepped into the row over his presidential opponent’s war record on Monday, declaring John Kerry had served ”admirably” in Vietnam and calling for an end to all political attack advertisements sponsored by non-party groups.