The managing director of Aon Re Africa has been elected president of the Insurance Institute of South Africa (IISA), Aon SA said on Monday. Simon Chikumbu was elected IISA president at the joint conference of the African Insurance Organisation and the IISA in Cape Town on Monday.
The South African Communist Party has denied intending to ”grill” Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils on his role in former deputy president Jacob Zuma’s rape trial. The party said on Monday it had noted a newspaper report about Kasrils’ attendance at this weekend’s central committee meeting and wanted to set the record straight.
The United States is to renew full diplomatic ties with Libya and take it off a list of states that back terrorism, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday. Rice called the resumption of relations the ”tangible results” of Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi’s decision in 2003 to renounce terrorism.
The Kuwaiti Parliament broke up in chaos on Monday when reformist MPs walked out in protest at attempts to block a redrawing of constituencies intended to counter alleged vote-buying. The reformers left the session when voting began on a motion tabled by conservative and tribal MPs that sought to refer a government-backed Bill to the Constitutional Court.
The United States Supreme Court on Monday delivered a victory to internet giant eBay in a closely watched case seen as a test for high-tech disputes over patent infringement. The court’s unanimous ruling does not exonerate eBay in the patent dispute with a company called MercExchange.
Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno, re-elected at the weekend, may have swept to victory in a poll boycotted by his main opponents, but critics and rebels agreed on Monday he faces huge problems. Results on Sunday night gave him a total of 77,53% of the votes cast on May 3, opening the way to a third five-year term.
Members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) are gearing up for a general strike on Thursday in support of the Jobs and Poverty Campaign. "Levels of unemployment and poverty in South Africa are totally unacceptable, and the poverty this causes is inflicting misery on millions of families," Cosatu said.
Côte d’Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo has vowed that he will remain in power as long as elections have not been held in the crisis-ridden and politically divided West African country. ”The Constitution on which I took [my] oath gives me a responsibility,” he declared on Sunday on a United Nations-run radio station.
Nigeria’s Central Bank opened a media campaign on Monday to try to discourage people from defacing or abusing the naira currency or hiding it in their underwear. In adverts on television, radio and in the press, the Central Bank said the naira should be handled with care and not defaced, squeezed, stained, torn or written on.
German and Polish hooligans will present the biggest risk of violence at the World Cup finals in Germany, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in a newspaper interview on Monday. ”The biggest problem we have is with German hooligans. We must not place the blame on neighbouring countries,” Schaeuble told Der Tagesspiegel newspaper.