The Chinese embassy in South Africa on Wednesday dismissed allegations that its government was involved in the shooting of a Falun Gong practitioner outside Johannesburg on Monday. But a group of Falun Gong spokespeople said the shooting is another example of the way the Chinese government persecutes them.
Spain’s Parliament may approve same-sex marriages early next year, Justice Minister Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar said on Wednesday. If the law is approved, it will make Spain the third European country to recognise gay marriages after The Netherlands and Belgium.
Ministerial intervention has finally led to the release of documents by Armscor to researchers for the Swiss National Science Foundation project on Swiss-South African military relations under apartheid. ”The requesters had to threaten Armscor with legal action,” said the director of the South African History Archives.
The possible exit of Deputy South African Reserve Bank Governor Gill Marcus follows "close on the heels" of the departure of Barbara Hogan as chairperson of the National Assembly finance portfolio committee, Democratic Alliance shadow finance minister Raenette Taljaard said on Wednesday.
The case between mining magnate Roger Kebble, his company Skilled Labour Brokers (SLB) and the government of South Africa has been further delayed, Kebble said in a statement on Wednesday. The charges against Kebble relate to SLB’s dealings with mining company Durban Roodepoort Deep.
Legal custody of Saddam Hussein and 11 other senior figures from his regime was transferred to the Iraqis on Wednesday, according to reports. An international official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the defendants were informed individually of their rights as the coalition ceded legal custody of them to Iraq.
Saddam to be shown in public
The United Nations court trying key suspects in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide is suffering a severe lack of funds because 140 UN members states have failed to honour their financial commitments, according to the tribunal’s spokesperson. Of the -million pledged to the court, -million has not been forthcoming.
Lesotho, surrounded by its giant neighbour, South Africa, is facing a third successive year of food shortages. According to the United Nations World Food Programme, a poor maize harvest earlier this year has meant that the Basotho are in for another hard winter.
A United Nations helicopter on a routine flight in eastern Sierra Leone crashed into a hillside on Tuesday, killing all 24 people on board, a UN spokesperson said. The helicopter, belonging to the Siberian-based UT Air charter company, was on a routine morning flight.
At least 6 000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) were left homeless after a fire gutted parts of the sprawling Pabbo camp in northern Uganda, destroying hundreds of grass-thatched huts where the IDPs had been living, local leaders and the army said.