South Africa had an obligation to oversee and regulate the thousands of militarily-qualified citizens selling their skills abroad, Parliament’s Defence Portfolio Committee heard on Tuesday. ”If you keep dangerous animals in your yard, you have responsibility to ensure they don’t get out and harm people,” Defence Department official Siviwe Njikela told committee members.
The semi-arid Sahel stretches across Africa just south of the Sahara. The region suffered severe drought during the second half of the 20th century, but there is disagreement between scientists on the reasons for the decline in rainfall — and on the Sahel’s future prospects of increased rainfall.
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A band of thieves described as ”very organised” broke into a warehouse in a Paris suburb and made off with hundreds of plasma TV sets, ”probably for the 2006 World Cup”, French police sources said on Tuesday. The robbery was carried out by six armed men, who drove up to the warehouse in the Paris suburb of La Courneuve in a lorry.
Business confidence could decline in months to come, the South African Chamber of Business (Sacob) warned on Tuesday. However, in May, the Business Confidence Index was still in ”comfortable territory”, said Sacob consulting economist Richard Downing.
Six years after barely losing the most contested presidential race in recent United States history, Al Gore has ridden a popular new film on global climate change to the centre of American politics. Former vice-president Gore denied again Sunday that he intended to contest the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 — which could pit him against his former boss’s wife, Senator Hillary Clinton.
The T-shirt says it all: ”9% of Americans like cereal; 57% like sex.” A new restaurant chain is poised to capitalise on the most important meal of the day by offering consumers tantalising combinations of their favorite cereals in trendy shops that scream fun.
Seven people have died in Namibia and 27 have fallen ill after an outbreak of polio, the first in the Southern African country since 1995, the health ministry said on Tuesday. "We have 34 cases and I can confirm today that it is polio," said Kalumbi Shangula, the permanent secretary of the health ministry.
Draped in the traditional jackets and robes of southern Iraq, the skeletons lie in a grim tableau at the bottom of the sandy ditch, their jaws open and blindfolds of tattered Arab scarves tied around their empty eye sockets. "I believe they were shot here," said Michael Trimble, head of the mass graves unit for the Regime Crimes Liaison Office in Iraq.
South Africa’s national parks are to get a R395-million facelift over the next three years, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk announced on Tuesday. ”This [spending] will be concentrated on … upgrading 520 existing accommodation units, supplying 100 new units [and] upgrading and constructing 320km of tourist roads,” he said.
Earthlife Africa is "disillusioned" by what it called South African Minister Alec Erwin’s "continuing confusion" about the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR). "Erwin cites the PBMR as an efficient and economical method of providing power. Since its inception, costs and schedules on the PBMR have continued to escalate," Earthlife Africa said in a statement on Tuesday.