Nigeria warned Sudan on Thursday that if it does not allow African Union peacekeepers and diplomats to resolve the Darfur crisis it will end up facing less friendly pressure from outside the continent. ”What has to be made clear is that if Sudan will not yield to gentle and African pressure it will have to succumb to extra-African pressure that might not be so gentle,” said Remi Oyo, spokesperson for President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Atrocities ‘continue in Darfur’
Trade unions will persist with setting up a commission of inquiry into retrenchments at Telkom, although the company has refused to take part in the process. In a statement on Thursday, the Solidarity union spokesperson Dirk Herman said the unions were disappointed at Telkom’s refusal to participate.
The Eastern Cape government needs more than R150-million over the next three years to address some of the problems it faced before 2002, an interim report said on Wednesday. The report states that the education department needed more than R37-million, social development over R93-million and roads and public works was short of more than R20-million.
The prospect that a tropical storm and a hurricane — or possibly two hurricanes — could strike Florida on the same day is something meteorologists say they have never seen. ”It’s almost unheard of,” state meteorologist Ben Nelson said. Disaster officials are keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Bonnie and Hurricane Charley.
An Italian envoy will fly to Libya on Friday to discuss radical plans to set up ”reception centres” for would-be immigrants, with officials from both countries estimating that up to two million people have already massed on the north African coast in readiness for an opportunity to travel by boat to Europe.
Rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday called on the Zimbabwe government to release information on grain availability in the country as part of its obligations to ensure its citizens’ right to food. It called on the government to make the information public immediately saying that by withholding vital information on grain availability, the government was ”gambling with its citizens’ access to food”.
It may not be an Olympic discipline yet. But while athletes from around the world gather in Athens, another group of contestants will converge today in the small Bavarian town of Bayreuth for what they see as an equally important competition. About 21 contestants from countries as diverse as Ukraine, Holland and Britain will be taking part in the world’s first championships in dive-bombing.
The South Korean government confirmed on Wednesday that it is to create a new capital in what will be one of Asia’s biggest construction projects to date. Under the -billion scheme, a site in the sleepy region of Gongju-Yongi 160km south of Seoul will replace it as the seat of Parliament and government by 2020.
While some disgruntled customers would probably like to see South African telecommunications giant Telkom burn in hell, the parastatal this week took exception to the popular website Hellkom and threatened the creator with a R5-million lawsuit for copyright infringement.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=120223">Telkom sues website owner for R5m</a>
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang will meet HIV/Aids experts in Johannesburg on Thursday to discuss reports of resistance to the drug nevirapine, her spokesperson said. The meeting follows a warning from the Medicines Control Council last month of signs of resistance to nevirapine as a monotheraphy.