The United States-led coalition will release 100 people from Iraqi prisons on Thursday, with hundreds more to be freed in coming weeks, the top US official in Iraq, Paul Bremer, announced in a policy address on Wednesday. Bremer also unveiled a programme of rewards for the capture of more wanted individuals.
Three members of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union involved in a national baggage handlers strike were arrested on Wednesday after they allegedly assaulted six non-striking workers of Equity Aviation Services on Monday. Earlier the African National Congress urged the two parties to return to the negotiating table.
The man at the centre of a Western Cape shark-baiting controversy on Wednesday explained his motives and actions in a letter to a local newspaper, saying they were misunderstood by the public. ”My motive and intention was to attract the large white shark out to the open sea away from the beach area,” he said.
Three major pan-African institutions will come into force in early 2004, the African Union announced on Tuesday. They include a much-heralded Peace and Security Council, modelled on the United Nations Security Council, as well as a pan-African Parliament and an African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Initial data indicated that 36 fewer people died on South African roads last month than in December 2002, the transport department said on Wednesday. This represented a decrease of three percent, deputy director-general Sipho Khumalo told reporters in Pretoria.
The editor of the weekly newspaper Le Republicain, Mamane Abou, was freed from jail by Niger’s Court of Appeal on Tuesday, after serving two months of a six-month sentence for publishing sensitive government documents. Abou was jailed on 5 November for his alleged complicity in the theft of the documents.
Listed fashion retailer Truworths International has concluded an agreement to acquire a controlling stake in Young Designers Emporium (YDE) for an undisclosed sum, with effect from December 1 2003. The YDE chain has 10 stores across South Africa in the country’s premier shopping malls, as well as a factory shop outlet.
Al-Qaeda is expected to launch attacks every three months in 2004, with growing threats from a number of smaller terrorist organisations, an international terrorist expert warned on Wednesday. ”The West is likely to witness another mass casualty attack on Western soil,” he said.
Dirty bomb sparked US alert
Agriculture officials met on Wednesday to work out measures to contain transmission of a mystery virus that has killed as many as 60 000 chickens in Vietnam. The disease emerged last week in the southern provinces but has now spread to other Mekong Delta provinces and Ho Chi Minh City as a result of panic selling.
Fear that ”terrorists” might set off a dirty bomb prompted United States authorities to raise the country’s level of alert to ”orange” or high. Based on experts’ belief that al-Qaeda may attempt to set off a dirty bomb during the end-of-year celebrations, scores of nuclear scientists with detection equipment travelled to five major cities.