The South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) will on Tuesday serve notice for secondary strikes in support of the wage demands of security guards, union leaders said. ”We will be serving notice tomorrow [Tuesday] for secondary strikes from other sectors of Satawu,” the union’s security industry spokesperson, Jackson Simon, said on Monday.
A severe earthquake estimated to measure 6,7 on the Richter scale on Monday struck in the north-eastern Pacific coastal area of Russia, the Hong Kong observatory said. The quake struck at 7.21pm Hong Kong time and its epicentre was located some 870km east of the Siberian city of Magadan, the observatory said.
Coastguards escorted to land hundreds of migrants floating at sea off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on Monday, causing an emergency at its overwhelmed transit centre, the Ansa news agency reported. Coastguards intercepted three vessels, carrying some 400 suspected illegal immigrants, to the Italian island south of Sicily early on Monday.
As many as 10 Atlantic hurricanes could form in coming months, and up to four of them could hit the United States, experts said on Monday, urging residents to prepare for potentially devastating storms. ”The outlook calls for a very active 2006 season,” the National Weather Service said in a report released on Monday.
Cape mayor Helen Zille spent part of Monday afternoon briefing Capetonians on how to seek redress from the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union for damage inflicted during a violent march last week. Her spokesperson, Robert Macdonald, said about 150 to 200 people attended the meeting at the Civic Centre.
Dagga worth an estimated R3-million was seized at a house at Cape Town’s Mfuleni area, Western Cape police said on Monday. Detectives visited the house, situated at Ngogoshe Street at Mfuleni Extension 4, at about 8pm on Sunday after a tip-off by a member of the public, Inspector Bernadine Steyn said.
France, Italy and Germany — but not Britain — have paid ransoms totalling -million for the freedom of nine hostages abducted in Iraq, The Times of London claimed on Monday. The claims were immediately rejected by the three governments listed by The Times as having ”bought” the release of hostages over the past two years.
De Beers chairperson Nicky Oppenheimer and the Botswana government will launch a new joint-venture company, the Botswana Diamond Trading Company, on Tuesday, De Beers said. A number of new mining releases are also to be signed. The diamond partnership between the two goes back to before the country attained independence from Britain in 1966.
Four people were seriously injured after being thrown off moving trains on Monday morning, Metrorail said. A number of people have been thrown from moving trains in Gauteng in recent weeks — many of them working security guards believed to be targeted by their striking colleagues.
Kenyan prosecutors on Monday said a local priest plotted the murder of a septuagenarian Italian bishop in northern Kenya last year in a row over cash donated to the diocese from well-wishers. The accusation came as the prosecution opened its case in the trial of the Father Waqo Guyo Malley and five others.