A team of researchers has reported the discovery of animal fossils more than four million years old in the Galila area of southeastern Ethiopia. The team discovered more than 400 faunal remains, including three ancient hominids, during excavation undertaken in 2003 and early this year.
Zimbabwe’s Daily News is due to challenge the Southern African country’s tough media laws before the Constitutional Court, a lawyer for the paper said on Tuesday. Mordecai Mahlangu said the Daily News, which was shut down by armed police in September, would ”ask for leave to be heard on the constitutional challenge”.
Greedy officials diverted aid intended for victims of Morocco’s deadly earthquake for their own use, according to a local leader and residents of a town where police arrested two people accused of fraudulently manipulating the relief effort. Two men have been arrested on suspicion of stashing away aid consignments.
After difficult negotiations that lasted for almost two years, Benin was finally granted a licence in January to export a variety of locally manufactured goods to the United States, tariff- and quota-free. But, laments Henri Gouthon, president of the National Council of Beninese Exporters, "Benin has nothing to export!"
Central banks prefer stability to almost any other quality and many have made either price or financial market stability their official policy. The elimination of South Africa’s forward book removes a historic source of vulnerability for the rand and will now allow the SARB to build its gross foreign reserves.
The South African Revenue Service (Sars) has lowered the "official rate of interest" used to determine fringe benefits taxes to 9% from 9,5%, effective from March 1. In a statement on Tuesday, Sars said the move follows the 50 basis point decrease in the repurchase (repo) rate by the South African Reserve Bank in December 2003.
Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana and his Cuban counterpart Alfredo Morales Cartaya have signed a memorandum of understanding focusing on employment, social security and occupational health and safety. The agreement, signed on Monday, made provision for the exchange of experts between the two countries.
China has published shocking statistics on the trafficking of women and children within its borders, with police freeing 42 215 victims during the two years from 2001, state press reported on Tuesday. Over the same period, more than 22 000 suspects were arrested as police cracked 20 360 cases involving kidnapped women and children.
The fate of 134 people missing from a burnt-out ferry in the Philippines remained a mystery on Tuesday after rescuers found no bodies or survivors inside its half-submerged hulk, the coast guard said. President Gloria Arroyo continued to dismiss claims that Muslim rebels the Abu Sayyaf had planted a bomb on the vessel.