A group of gun owners and gun shop owners are demanding that police grant them firearm licences in a memorandum handed to the office of Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa on Tuesday. The statement read that black gun owners were ”sick and tired of the lies” from Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Council said on Tuesday that police had arrested two of its investigators probing alleged abuses by authorities during a police crackdown on post-election violence. The arrests took place shortly after more than 3Â 000 opposition members had been rounded up by police.
The Ugandan army said on Tuesday that it had killed at least 19 rebels from the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the past two days in various parts of the country’s war-ravaged northern area. Several of the fighters drowned while attempting to escape from military patrols by jumping into a river in Gulu district.
More than a million Americans were infected with HIV/Aids at the end of 2003, with black, homosexual and bisexual men making up the largest group among them, says a government statistics report made public on Monday. African-Americans made up about 47% of this group, whites 34%, and Hispanics 17%.
A 14-year-old boy has died after apparently being asphyxiated by fumes from a brazier at an initiation school in Port Elizabeth, the Eastern Cape health department said on Tuesday. The police have opened an inquest docket, and a post-mortem will be conducted to establish the exact cause of his death.
The trial of a reputed Ku Klux Klansman accused of the 1964 murder of three young civil rights workers in Mississippi began on Monday with potential jurors bussed past barricades to the the Neshoba County courthouse. The defendant, 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen, looked straight ahead and said nothing as he was taken by wheelchair into the red-brick courthouse.
Fifa is to consider using an electronic microchip in balls at the 2006 World Cup finals if experiments prove successful, Fifa president Sepp Blatter said on Monday.
The microchip, which is supposed to confirm whether or not a ball has crossed the goal line, is being tested at the under-17 world championship in Peru later this year.
Turkey was being set up as the main casualty of French and Dutch rejection of the European Union Constitution on Monday night when France seemed to put the brakes on Ankara’s 40-year dream of joining the union. However Britain is determined to press ahead with accession talks on October 3.
South African motor trade sales rose by 23,2% year-on-year in March 2005 to R18 308-billion compared with those for March 2004, Statistics South Africa reported on Tuesday. However, the seasonally adjusted motor trade sales for the first quarter of 2005 decreased by 0,3% compared with the previous quarter.
The Chamber of Mines told the representative unions for the gold mining sector on Tuesday that the sector was experiencing its worst crisis for the past 44 years. Three unions — Solidarity, the National Union of Mineworkers and the United Association of South Africa — have started talks with the chamber regarding wages and other conditions of employment.