Tuesday, November 17, 2009
From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Amy Witherden.
Making headlines:
The African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) will not allow former President Thabo Mbeki to be charged with genocide, said its leader Julius Malema at a gala dinner of the Pan-African Youth Union yesterday.
This comes after Young Communist League national secretary Buti Manamela said that Mbeki and former Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang had denied many HIV-positive people access to antiretroviral drugs while they were in government, and called for the two to be charged with genocide.
"We must never surrender our leaders," Malema said. He explained that charging one leader could lead to unwanted action against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, and South African President Jacob Zuma.

The United Nations (UN) opened its world food summit yesterday by saying that a climate change deal in Copenhagen next month is crucial to fighting global hunger as rising temperatures threaten farm output in poor countries.
UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said that there can be no food security without climate security.
Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi called for an end to the purchase of African farmland by food-importing nations, describing it as "new feudalism" and "land grabbing" in African countries.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation DG Jacques Diouf told the summit that "private investment should be encouraged", but that rules are required "preferably within the spirit of a code of conduct on agricultural investment in developing countries".

The need for greater global currency stability means that the world can no longer rely, as it has done since the end of the gold standard, on a currency issued by a single country, says International Monetary Fund (IMF) MD Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
He suggests that a new global currency might evolve out of the Special Drawing Right (SDR), the IMF's in-house unit of account. "In a globalised world, there is no domestic solution," Strauss-Kahn said.
Former IMF chief, Michel Camdessus, added that the time is right to embark on reform.

Also making headlines:
Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale says that R1,3-billion is needed to fix badly built reconstruction and development programme houses.
Movement for Democratic Change official Roy Bennett denies terrorism charges in a Zimbabwean court.
And, South African interest rates are expected to remain steady as new Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus heads the Monetary Policy Committee today.
That's a roundup of news making headlines today.