South Africa apologised to Rwanda on Wednesday for not ”crying out” loud enough when hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives in 100 days of genocide in that country in 1994. ”We did not cry out as loudly as we should have,” President Thabo Mbeki told a commemoration ceremony in the Rwandan capital of Kigali.
About 20 Palestinians were lightly hurt on Wednesday as Israeli troops fired teargas and rubber bullets at protesters demonstrating against the West Bank separation barrier, medical sources said. At least one of the casualties was struck by a rubber-coated bullet while others suffered from the effects of tear gas.
Lawmakers in Côte d’Ivoire have begun debating revisions to a controversial law on the status of foreigners in the West African country, which has been blamed for sparking tensions that led to civil war in 2002. The National Assembly met on Monday and Tuesday in an extraordinary session to debate changes to the law.
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The ministries of safety and security and justice appeared to be ”ministries of mayhem and anarchy”, a Mondeor resident who endorses the Democratic Alliance said on Wednesday. The Alive Campaign and the Suid-Afrika Teen Misdaad-Aksiegroep came out in a show of support for the DA in Johannesburg.
Special Report: Elections 2004
Synthetic fuels group Sasol and PetroSA, the state-owned oil and gas exploration company, are to sign a heads of agreement document in Pretoria on Thursday to collaborate and possibly engage in joint projects relating to natural gas and chemical operations.
The squirrel on which author Beatrix Potter based her Squirrel Nutkin a century ago is facing extinction in its home in the English Lake District, scientists studying the red squirrel said on Wednesday. Peter Lurz of Newcastle University said fewer than 1 000 of the rare Cumbrian red still survive.
United States officials vowed on Tuesday to hunt down and destroy the militia of a radical Shiite Muslim cleric, as coalition troops struggled to stop Iraq sliding into chaos with more than 150 people killed on both sides in three days of clashes.
Uprising in Iraq could derail Bush
A ”horrible tragedy” is unfolding in North Korea where up to 7% of the population has reportedly died from a lack of food over the past decade, a United Nations expert on the right to food said on Wednesday. Millions more will stay hungry unless the international community makes urgent donations to the World Food Programme.
The South African Revenue Service (Sars) has requested the country’s four major commercial banks to introduce a payment validation system on each of their electronic banking applications to prevent incorrect electronic tax payments. Sars said on Wednesday First National Bank will be the first to begin in April.
On the eve of what is shaping up as the most democratic presidential election to date to be held in Algeria, the press and three of the six candidates in the polls on Wednesday accused the incumbent Abdelaziz Bouteflika of plotting to steal the vote. Candidates agree that a first-round victory by Bouteflika would raise suspicions.