Seventy South African suspected mercenaries being held in Zimbabwe lodged an application on Monday for leave to appeal to the Constitutional Court after a Pretoria judge refused to order their extradition home. They would contest Transvaal Judge President Bernard Ngoepe’s ruling on the grounds that a South African’s constitutionally-entrenched rights had to be enforceable in a foreign country.
The Bush administration’s efforts to contain the Abu Ghraib prison scandal were undermined on Monday when a military judge gave defence lawyers the right to call evidence from America’s most senior commanders on the interrogation techniques they authorised for use on Iraqi detainees.
Arms-exporting governments are reneging on their promises by failing to take into account the impact that the trade has on poverty, Oxfam says in a report published on Tuesday. Sales are diverting resources from areas such as health and education.
Fears of another war in central Africa grew on Monday as the Democratic Republic of Congo sent thousands of troops to its eastern frontier in a move branded hostile by Rwanda. Up to 10 000 government soldiers have been flown east in a rapid build-up of force which reflects renewed tension between two neighbours, who supposedly buried the hatchet last year.
South African financial services group Old Mutual has confirmed that its US asset management affiliate Pilgrim Baxter & Associates has reached agreements with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (and the Office of the New York State attorney general. The agreement settles all charges brought by these authorities.
South Africa will announce its decision on the second national operator (SNO) of fixed line telephone services "before the end of August this year", said Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe- Casaburri on Monday, speaking at her Budget vote in Parliament.
It was not much bigger than the four-wheel drives gathered in the dust to watch, but a small, oddly shaped white machine made history on Monday when it soared through the Californian sky to become the world’s first commercial craft in space. Piloted by South African-born Mike Melvill, the tiny rocket-cum-glider fired its way into the aerospace record books, reaching 10 times the height of a commercial jet’s cruising altitude on its one-hour, 28-minute maiden flight
John Schneeberger, the disgraced South African doctor jailed for sex crimes and stripped of his Canadian citizenship, on Monday lost his fight against expulsion from the country. An immigration Board hearing in Regina took less than 10 minutes to declare him an undesirable alien and order his deportation.
British diplomats were on Monday night frantically trying to prevent a full-scale diplomatic crisis between London and Tehran after the seizure of three Royal Navy vessels in the disputed waterway between southern Iraq and Iran. Eight crew members of the three boats, sailors and marines who were part of a British team training Iraqi river police, were being held by the Iranian authorities.
Fresh concern has been raised that United States Vice-President Dick Cheney may have played a role in the decision to award his former company Halliburton a -billion contract for work in post-war Iraq. According to a congressional investigation, Cheney’s top aide, Lewis Libby, was involved in high-level talks in October 2002, which led to the firm securing the contract.