New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned from office on Wednesday, succumbing to threats of impeachment and mounting media pressure over his involvement in a career-ending prostitution scandal. Speaking to reporters in New York, Spitzer said he had failed to live up to the standards expected of public officials.
The government will table draft legislation intended to regulate the private health sector within two months, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Wednesday. ”It is clear that we cannot sustain unregulated private healthcare service delivery in this country and at the same time regulate the medical-schemes industry,” she said.
A former comrade-in-arms of Charles Taylor on Wednesday told judges at the former Liberian president’s war-crimes trial that Taylor ordered him to take arms to Sierra Leone rebels and exchange them for diamonds. Joseph Marzah told the court that in the early 1990s he went to Sierra Leone about 40 times with transports carrying rifles and rockets.
The Department of Health has shown a decided lack of enthusiasm for investigating the activities of vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath, the Cape High Court was told on Wednesday. ”The government has failed completely in its … duties to protect the health of the public,” said Geoff Budlender, advocate for the Treatment Action Campaign.
South Africa on Wednesday rejected ”with contempt” claims by jailed British mercenary Simon Mann that it backed his plot to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea. ”South Africa is thrown in just out of the blue … he says he had a nod from us. I would like to know in what sense he had a nod,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said.
President Thabo Mbeki needs to urgently intervene to stop Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Brigitte Mabandla’s ”sadistic games”, Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) chief whip Koos van der Merwe said on Wednesday. ”The minister of justice can best be described as a sadist,” he said in a statement.
South Africa believes conditions for a free and fair election in Zimbabwe exist — at least on paper, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said on Wednesday. Speaking to reporters at the Union Buildings, Pahad said the next 17 days in the run-up to the Zimbabwean presidential and parliamentary elections would be telling.
Hamas set out its conditions on Wednesday for a ceasefire with Israel, calling for an end to all acts of Israeli ”aggression” in the Gaza Strip and West Bank and the reopening of Gaza border crossings. Hamas is demanding a say in the future functioning of the crossings, a condition rejected by Israel.
France’s last surviving veteran of World War I, an Italian immigrant who fought in the trenches with the Foreign Legion, has died at the age of 110, the president’s office said on Wednesday. Lazare Ponticelli, who joined his adopted country’s army at the outbreak of the war with Germany in 1914, had attended a memorial ceremony as recently as November 2007.
Parliament’s joint standing committee on intelligence came to ”incorrect conclusions” in its report on the so-called ”Special Browse Mole Consolidated Report” produced by the Scorpions, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said on Wednesday. ”Whilst we respect the role of the committee, we contest its views,” NPA spokesperson Tlali Tlali said.