Seoul  - South Korea's government on Tuesday lowered its forecast for 2009 economic growth from a previous 4 per cent to 3 per cent because of the global financial crisis.

President Lee Myung Bak told his cabinet that the depths of the current downturn was expected in the first half of 2009 as he ordered his government to act quickly to mitigate the impact of the crisis on South Korea and look toward its future recovery.

Dubai, Dec 15 (ANI): South Africa will overtake Australia at the top if it wins series 3-0; India will retake second place if it beats England in Mohali.

South Africa will go top of the Reliance Mobile ICC Test Championship table if it beats Australia 3-0 in the three-match series that gets underway in Perth on Wednesday.

Graeme Smith's team gets its tour underway in earnest with two fast bowlers - Makhaya Ntini and Dale Steyn - in the top five of the Reliance Mobile ICC Test Player Rankings on a WACA surface that traditionally favours the pace men.

Johannesburg  - The US ambassador to Zimbabwe on Sunday accused President Robert Mugabe's regime of splurging on expensive presents for party loyalists, and leaving the job of caring for desperate Zimbabweans to Mugabe's so-called "enemies" in the West.

In a letter published in South Africa's Sunday Times newspaper, James McGee accused the regime of forking out on cars for government ministers and plasma televisions for judges while Zimbabweans were being snuffed out in large numbers by cholera, an easily preventable and treatable disease.

Mugabe's regime accuses Western sanctions of causing the country's nosedive, although the sanctions are aimed only at his ruling clique.

Johannesburg  - South Africa's new political party, the Congress of the People (COPE), began its inaugural conference Sunday with promises to reform the electoral system and improve public services if victorious in next year's general elections.

COPE was founded by a group of former members of the ruling African National Congress, who quit the party after the ANC dumped Thabo Mbeki as president in September.

At its three-day conference in the southern city of Bloemfontein, thousands of COPE delegates, led by firebrand former ANC chairman Mosiuoa Lekota, are expected to hammer out a party manifesto. Bloemfontein, capital of Free State province, is also where the ANC was founded nearly 100 years ago, in 1912.

Perth, Dec. 13 : South African wicketkeeper Mark Boucher on Saturday became the fifth member of the team to go down with an injury.

Boucher made 13 runs in South Africa''s 8-320 on the opening day of their two-day game against a Western Australia second XI in Perth, could not take the field on Saturday because of a "mild ankle sprain", the Herald Sun reports.

Boucher, however, will be available for the first Test that begins next Wednesday.

Test No. 6 batsman AB De Villiers, who scored a brilliant 129 on Friday, stood in for Boucher and took two neat catches behind the stumps off Dale Steyn''s bowling.

Seoul  - South Korean GDP growth is expected to slow down from the 3.7-per-cent forecast for 2008 to 2 per cent in 2009, the central bank said Friday.

The central Bank of Korea (BoK) blamed the global economic downturn - which has curtailed the country's exports and cut down domestic consumption - for the lowest growth forecast since 1998.

"The Korean economy is unlikely to recover its growth momentum before 2010 as it undergoes a slowdown both in exports and domestic spending amid the global economic recession," said Kim Jae-Chun, a senior official at BoK.

The current account forecast by the BoK predicts a reversal from a deficit of 4.5 billion dollars in 2008 to a surplus of 22 billion dollars for 2009.