The former Western Cape leader of the Independent Democrats, Lennit Max, won a high court order on Wednesday preventing the party from filling his seat in the provincial legislature. Judge Dennis Davis also declared that Max’s expulsion from the party, ordered after an internal disciplinary hearing, be suspended until his appeal is finalised.
About 30 ANC councillors stormed out of a Buffalo City council meeting on Tuesday in a rumpus over the mayor’s official house, East London’s Daily Dispatch reported. It said on Wednesday the walk-out reduced the council meeting to chaos and it had to be abandoned.
Oil prices rose on Wednesday, with New York’s main crude contract above on concerns that refineries may be unable to produce sufficient fuel after being battered by Hurricane Katrina, analysts said. New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in October, rose 67 cents to ,48 per barrel in electronic trading.
A six percent economic growth rate is not a pipe dream and could be achieved by early in the next decade, an Absa economist said on Wednesday. John Loos said some economists may be underforecasting and that the six percent ”was a real possibility”.
At least 647 people were killed and 301 injured on Wednesday in a stampede in Baghdad on a bridge near a Shi’ite shrine where tens of thousands of the faithful were gathered, a security official said. Many of the dead drowned after falling off the bridge in a surge of panic triggered by rumours there were suicide bombers in the crowd.
A senior United Nations official has accused President George W Bush of “doing damage to Africa” by cutting funding for condoms.
Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller stunned former champion Andy Roddick in New York on Tuesday, sending the fourth-seeded American packing 7-6 (7/4), 7-6 (10/8), 7-6 (7/1) in the first round of the US Open tennis championships. Muller spoiled what should have been Roddick’s 23rd birthday celebrations with a display of poise and precision.
The trials and tribulations of talented Jomo Cosmos continued at the Germiston Stadium on Wednesday afternoon when the bottom club in the Premier League table tumbled to a tense, nail-biting 2-1 defeat against Dynamos. Not even a revival in the final 30 minutes could rescue Cosmos from a third defeat at this early juncture of the season.
Eritrea’s decision to bar the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) from operating in the impoverished Horn of Africa nation is ”irreversible,” the country’s national development minister said on Wednesday. ”We are uncomfortable with the operations of the USAid office in Asmara,” said Woldai Futur.
Angola plans to begin rebuilding its roads destroyed in the 1975-2002 civil war, starting with a 300km stretch between the capital Luanda and the northern agricultural and mining province of Uige, the national road body said on Tuesday. Almost all of the country’s main roads are unusable after the war.