Zimbabwe police have rejected claims of torture made by suspects arrested in connection with an alleged coup plot, and say they are confident of making more arrests soon. Police have also called on former opposition MP Roy Bennett to hand himself over for questioning in relation to their ongoing investigations.
Sri Lanka on Tuesday accused Tamil Tiger rebels of conscripting more child soldiers despite pledges to end the internationally-condemned practice of enlisting underage combatants. The defence ministry in a statement accused the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of abducting two schoolboys in the restive eastern district of Batticaloa on Monday.
With the government’s Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (Asgisa) in full steam, it is confident that South Africa will achieve an economic growth rate of at least 6% between 2010 and 2014, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said on Monday.
Eritrea on Monday denied accusations by Ethiopia that it was behind three separate explosions that rocked Addis Ababa last week and wounded four people. Yemane Gebremeskel, director of the president’s office, said that the weekend accusations by Addis Ababa were meant to shift "attention from their own domestic problems".
The African Union has extended the mandate of its peacekeeping mission in the western Sudanese Darfur region by six months, after which it will transfer the operation to the United Nations, a statement issued in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa said.
South Africa’s largest retail bank, Absa, on Monday announced a new fee structure that will offer its more than 7-million customers greater levels of choice and value for money in their banking activities. The new fee structure is effective from April 1 2006.
Forget the Mao suits of a generation ago. Actually, forget about any clothes at all. Naked wedding photos are the hot new trend among young couples in once deeply conservative China. Even in Anhui, a largely rural province in the east, many newly-weds are having their pictures taken in the nude, to the fury of their parents’ generation.
Knight Ridder, the second-largest newspaper company in the United States, agreed late on Sunday to a $4,5-billion cash and stock buyout by the McClatchy Company, <i>The New York Times</i> reported on Monday. Citing sources involved in the negotiations, the newspaper said the deal was expected to be announced on Monday.
Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, the "Butcher of the Balkans" being tried for war crimes and genocide over the Balkans conflicts that killed more than 200Â 000 people, was found dead in his cell-room bed on Saturday. The news provoked widespread fury.
A seemingly drunken neurosurgeon was wrestled into custody by sheriff’s deputies while on his way to the operating room in a San Francisco-area hospital, officials said on Thursday. Frederico Castro-Moure (45) was also suspended from his post as head of neurosurgery at the Alameda County Medical Centre.
Malawi’s private sector has drawn attention to the country’s poor business climate and called for government cooperation in creating an environment more conducive to business. The Malawi Confederation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry has conducted a survey among 100 of its members.
China will increase its spending on science and technology by nearly 20% this year in a move to remain competitive internationally, the government said on Friday. The central government will allocate 71,6-billion yuan ($8,8-billion) from its budget for science and technology in 2006, up 19,2% over last year, said Zhang Shaochun, assistant minister of finance.
A meeting of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union opened in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on Friday to discuss the proposed transfer of the pan-African body’s peacekeeping force in Sudan’s western Darfur region to the United Nations, officials said.
Every year more British skiers flood Bulgaria’s high-altitude mountain resorts, attracted by the well-managed slopes and low prices in the small Balkan country. A two-hour drive south from the capital Sofia gets you to the most popular Bansko ski resort, where numerous construction sites testify to tourism’s rapid development on the Pirin mountain slopes.
Thailand’s top private hospital, the Bumrungrad International Hospital, and a leading Asian travel agency said on Friday they had forged a tie-up to boost medical tourism in the kingdom. Bumrungrad, one of the most popular medical tourism destinations in Asia, attracts more than 400Â 000 foreign patients each year.
The British now spend more time on the internet than watching television, according to a survey published on Wednesday by internet search engine Google. The report showed that British internet users spend an average of 164 minutes online daily compared with 148 minutes watching television.
The head of the open-source software translation project <i>Translate.org.za</i>, Dwane Bailey, this week called on civil society to help localise software and push proprietary firms to do likewise. He was speaking at the Sangonet ICTs for Civil Society conference in Johannesburg.
Were I to name and describe a certain cabinet minister as looking like an emaciated spaniel undergoing a haemorrhoid crisis, I would be guilty of being offensively personal. In describing people — especially important people — journalists are supposed to show restraint when it comes to making fun of things over which the people in question have no control — like their looks.
National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi is "furious" at police incompetence in the search for the slain four-year-old grandchild of Transvaal Judge President Bernard Ngoepe. "I have never experienced such levels of incompetence before," Selebi said, vowing to hold to account the police responsible.
On Monday morning, it was celebration time in South Africa as <i>Tsotsi</i> won an Oscar for best foreign film. It was a national high-water mark. At the same time, real political tsotsis — called "comrade tsotsis" in the old days — were running amok outside the Johannesburg High Court, threatening the rape complainant in Jacob Zuma’s trial.
Transnet management gave notice that it would press ahead with its decision to dispose of non-core business units and announced its appointment of Standard Bank as its transaction adviser. It also announced that Metrorail would be transferred into the South African Rail Commuter Corporation under the Department of Transport by way of sale agreement.
The United States Department of State has listed Zimbabwe among the worst dictatorships in the world that trample on human rights and whose rulers are accountable to no one. It grouped Zimbabwe among some of the world’s most notorious dictatorships, such as the reclusive communist state of North Korea.
Asia’s newest and poorest nation East Timor faces a tough task lifting itself out of poverty despite social and political gains and rich unexploited oil and gas reserves, a United Nations report said on Thursday. The report painted a bleak picture of conditions in the nation of one million people, where the economy has been shrinking and development indicators only slightly improving.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) executive board on Wednesday resolved not to restore Zimbabwe’s voting rights and to maintain a freeze on loans to the crisis-hit Southern African nation. Zimbabwe’s Minister of Finance, Herbert Murerwa, had hoped to persuade the fund to release badly needed financial support
Listed financial services group Sanlam has reported a 99% increase in headline earnings per share for the year to the end of December 2005 to 229,8 cents from 115,3 cents a year earlier. The company declared a total dividend for the year of 65 cents per share, a 30% increase on the 50 cents per share distributed in 2004.
HIV/Aids and human rights activists have called for commercial sex work to be decriminalised as a means of tackling the spread of HIV/Aids.
The head of Southern African Catholics says he and other church leaders have told President Thabo Mbeki to impose sanctions against President Robert Mugabe’s government but the South African leader will not do it because he lacks the political will.
A four-year-old boy who died in Indonesia is the sixth suspected fatal victim of bird flu in the last week, health workers said on Tuesday. The boy died on Monday at Sayidiman Hospital at Magetan, in East Java, less than 10 minutes after arriving, Sudarsih, a nurse, told Agence France-Presse.
An increase in minimum wages for farm workers — introduced on March 1 — is not the main reason for dismissals in the agricultural sector in Mpumalanga. This is according to Glen Cormark of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), who also noted that there were 600 cases of unfair dismissal in the sector since last April.
Waco Africa, the South African business of Waco International, on Monday announced a strategic long-term Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) agreement with the Kagiso Group. Waco International was recently sold in one of the largest-ever foreign equity buyout investments in South Africa, for R5,4-billion.
Sappi’s CEO, Jonathan Leslie, has resigned from the company with immediate effect. The announcement is to be made by Chairman Eugene van As on behalf of the board at Monday’s Annual General Meeting. Leslie joined Sappi in April 2003 and has been chief executive of the business for three years.
Of course I knew it was a hoax. The phone rang and I made the mistake of answering it. It asked, in halting, Spanish-accented tones, if I spoke Afrikaans. That’s when I knew it was a hoax. "I have a story to tell," she continued, in English, after I had assured her that I did not speak a word of Afrikaans.