Gauteng provincial minister of community safety Firoz Cachalia will provide feedback on the crime operation he launched six months ago at the end of January, his spokesperson said on Monday. ”A detailed evaluation will be undertaken later this week to identify the successes of Operation Iron Fist and to establish what challenges still need to be overcome,” said Phumla Sekhonyane.
United States President George Bush will unveil his new strategy for Iraq in a prime-time speech to the nation on Wednesday at 9pm local time, the White House said on Monday. "The president will be addressing the nation on his plan for a way forward in Iraq and the global war on terror," spokesperson Tony Snow said.
Zimbabwe requires more than $2-billion to build a new hydroelectric station, refurbish and expand existing power plants to avert an energy shortfall likely to black out the country and much of Southern Africa this year, according to the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority.
At least 20 people died from cold weather in northern Bangladesh in the past 24 hours, taking the confirmed death toll from the frigid conditions to 110 in the past week, officials said on Monday. The victims, most of them beggars and the homeless, died as the mercury dropped to five degrees Celsius.
Two people have been killed and hundreds more left homeless after flash floods swept through large parts of southern Malawi, local officials said on Monday. Major roads in the districts of Chikwawa and Nsanje were also rendered impassable as a result of incessant rain since the new year, but the full impact of the floods was still unknown as areas had been completely cut off.
SA Rugby has announced that the newly appointed managing director, Jonathan Stones, is scheduled to take up his new position on January 15. Confirming the news of the appointment, board chairperson Mpumelelo Tshume said he was pleased to welcome to SA Rugby a businessman of Stones’s calibre.
A group of Algerian schoolchildren hanged a 12-year-old classmate in a game imitating the execution of Saddam Hussein, a newspaper reported on Monday, in the latest of a series of copycat hangings. The Algerian boy died two days after the former Iraqi dictator was hanged on December 30, in the village of Oued Rihou in western Algeria, the newspaper reported.
The conflicts raging in Africa were at the top of Pope Benedict XVI’s concerns as he held his traditional New Year’s meeting on Monday with ambassadors to the Holy See. ”We must not forget Africa with its numerous situations of war and tension,” he said.
The South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) has threatened a strike against South African Airways (SAA) in protest at the company’s planned retrenchments, the union said on Monday. South Africa’s national carrier announced in November last year that it planned to axe 1Â 000 employees to curb high operating costs.
In recent weeks, violence has flared again in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, forcing the largest-scale evacuation of humanitarian workers since aid operations in the war-torn area began in 2004. More than 400 staff members from the United Nations and NGOs were moved from conflict zones last month due to rising insecurity.