Close to 21Â 000 members of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) are likely to embark on strike action on July 26 if a meeting between union representatives and car-manufacturer CEOs does not bring results next week Tuesday. This was among several announcements made by Numsa on Thursday.
After initially sagging in the wake of a soft euro, the South African rand righted itself and is stuck in a narrow range against the dollar in a quiet market. According to dealers, the release of United States producer inflation data later on Thursday will give the dollar direction.
Niger’s Prime Minister, Hama Amadou, was unhurt when a military helicopter he was travelling in crashed on Wednesday in the east of the country, a source close to him said. Amadou was on a campaign tour for July 24 municipal elections when the crash occurred at Magaria, about 100km south of Zinder.
Swarms of locusts have arrived in northeast Senegal, sources reported on Wednesday, invading earlier than in previous years and threatening crops during the growing season. On Monday Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade wrote to the Group of Eight industrialised countries, calling on them to declare war on the locusts.
President Mwai Kibaki has declared a national disaster in drought-stricken parts of Kenya, calling for nearly -million in emergency aid from abroad to feed about 3,3-million Kenyans facing food shortages. The country will need an estimated 156Â 000 tons of food aid in the next six months, Kibaki said on Tuesday.
United States President George Bush on Wednesday renewed his election-year appeal for a controversial constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage after that effort suffered a Senate defeat. ”I am deeply disappointed that the [amendment] was temporarily blocked in the Senate,” he said in a statement.
Experts called on Thursday for urgent work on HIV-killing gels that could help protect women who can’t rely on condoms, while democracy icon Nelson Mandela told the world not to ignore tuberculosis (TB) in its battle against Aids. TB is a common diseases that attacks Aids patients after their immune systems have been destroyed.
Gunmen assassinated a Iraqi provincial governor on Wednesday, hours after a suicide attacker detonated a massive car bomb that killed at least 10 and wounded 40 in the worst attack in Baghdad since the United States handed over power to the Iraqi interim government on June 28.
One of the Boeremag treason trial accused told the Pretoria High Court on Wednesday he is not the ”monster” he is made out to be. ”At the start of the trial we were portrayed as these vicious barbarians who had no respect for human lives and drove around planting bombs everywhere,” testified Gerhardus ”Vis” Visagie.
The South African government will send a delegation to Equatorial Guinea to ensure that the trial of eight South Africans arrested in that country — for allegedly plotting to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema — will be conducted in a fair manner. The Minister of Foreign Affairs announced this in Pretoria on Wednesday.