About 800 Rwandans out of nearly 20 000 who fled to neighbouring Burundi to seek refuge for fear of appearing before local genocide courts have voluntarily returned home in the past month, officials said on Tuesday. Didace Nzikoruriho, in charge of refugee affairs at Burundi’s interior ministry, said the gradual return was expected to end in the next three months.
South Africa’s Public Enterprises department will talk through the possible pitfalls of the massive injection of capital into government’s infrastructure programme, said Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin on Tuesday. "It is very important that the Treasury does what it now does, which is to monitor the borrowing programme"
Former Manchester United star Jesper Olsen is in a Melbourne hospital after collapsing with a brain haemorrhage. A statement from Olsen’s company, Proactive Sports Management Australia, said he was admitted to hospital on Thursday last week after suffering a sub-arachnoid haemorrhage.
A warrant for the arrest of Pretoria advocate Dirk Prinsloo was issued on Tuesday after he failed to turn up for his trial in the high court on charges ranging from soliciting children to rape and fraud. Judge Mahomed Ismail issued a warrant for Prinsloo’s arrest after hearing that Prinsloo had phoned his legal representatives to tell them ”he was not returning from Russia”.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, sent a letter on Monday to United States President George Bush — the first such communication for 27 years — offering an analysis of global issues and ”new ways of getting out of the current delicate situation in the world”.
The first round of voting for Italy’s new president ended in failure on Monday night after Silvio Berlusconi and his allies ruled out a compromise candidate put forward by the centre-left, the veteran former minister Giorgio Napolitano. Berlusconi’s supporters rallied behind Gianni Letta, a long-standing associate of the tycoon.
Germany faced fresh embarrassment on Monday over its handling of next month’s World Cup after it emerged that an official sponsor had given hundreds of free tickets to leading German politicians. Prosecutors said they were investigating whether the German energy company EnBW had broken the law by offering the tickets to regional and national MPs.
South African Airways (SAA) was likely to report its financials as a separate company for the 2006/07 financial year and its separation from its parent company Transnet was well under way, Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin said on Tuesday.
European intelligence services have warned Morocco that terrorists are planning attacks on political, business and tourist targets in the North African country, the Al Ahdath Al Maghribia newspaper said on Tuesday. ”Moroccan security authorities received a message from their European counterparts warning of [potential] attacks,” the newspaper said, quoting ”well-informed sources”.
Police have killed the leader of an al-Qaeda-inspired militant group who was wanted for last month’s Sinai bombings that killed 21 people, said the local North Sinai police command. Nasser Khamis el-Mallahi, the leader of Egypt’s Monotheism and Jihad, was shot dead and his accomplice captured in a gun battle in an olive grove on Tuesday morning.