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Zimbabwe’s independent Tribune weekly on Wednesday lost its court bid to return to the newsstands, a month after it became the third newspaper to be shut down in a year. Justice Tendai Uchena of the Harare High Court ruled that the official media commission was entitled to revoke the Tribune‘s licence.
The body of Leigh Matthews, believed to have been kidnapped almost two weeks ago, was found south of Johannesburg on Wednesday, police confirmed. Johannesburg police spokesperson Superintendent Chris Wilken said she was found in the veld at about 3.30pm.
A patient suffered a broken leg and several others were injured on Wednesday when the ceiling of a Vanderbijlpark hospital caved in, Vaal Rand police said. Captain Maria Mazibuko said the ceiling of the outward patients department at the Medi-Vaal private hospital suddenly gave way and fell on patients.
The South African government gave the signal on Wednesday that the public debate about foreign ownership of land in the country will continue. President Thabo Mbeki backed the national discussion of the issue of foreign land ownership during his Budget vote in the National Assembly in June.
A Lutheran Church elder was killed and two others critically injured while travelling to Pretoria on Wednesday afternoon to buy new chairs for their church. The accident happened on the Ben Schoeman highway in Centurion, Gauteng. When the church’s bishop arrived on the scene, he found the church’s money had gone missing.
An impasse in free trade talks between the Southern African Customs Union and the United States is unlikely to be resolved before the US presidential elections. ”The political climate leading up to elections may not lend itself to any material shift in US positions,” the Department of Trade and Industry official said on Wednesday.
Amid growing corruption allegations against the Kenyan government, the European Union has postponed a decision on whether to give Kenya new grants, EU and Kenyan officials said on Wednesday. The EU delayed its decision because it wants clarification on some issues, Cabinet secretary Francis Muthaura said, without elaborating.
A special Vatican inspector began his inquiry on Wednesday into the discovery of a vast cache of child pornography at a seminary where candidates for the priesthood photographed themselves kissing and fondling each other. Austrian Bishop Klaus Kueng was appointed on Tuesday as Pope John Paul II’s ”apostolic visitor” to deal with the scandal.
South Africa had the potential to be the engine of much-needed economic growth on the African continent but the government appeared to be in the process of abandoning growth-favouring economic policies, the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) leader, Tony Leon argued in the United States on Wednesday.