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/ 11 September 2004
Periodically, St Mark’s Square in Venice is flooded by spring tides. On Friday night it was inundated with Hollywood executives and movie stars for the first film premiere to be staged in the historic piazza. Shark Tale features, perhaps appropriately, acquatic, cartoon characters, one of which speaks with a pronounced mafia growl. The voice belongs to the veteran actor Robert De Niro, many of whose defining roles have been as an Italian-American gangster.
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/ 11 September 2004
Islamic militants in Iraq are strengthening their grip on the insurgent stronghold of Falluja, four months after American commanders struck a ceasefire deal that was supposed to pacify the city and return it to government control, residents said on Friday. Militants have imposed religious law on communities, issuing edicts and executing those accused of spying and even stealing.
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/ 11 September 2004
There are, at most, 15 of them. Their ages range from 19 to 42, their professions from nurse to window dresser, mason to film director. And in a cave beneath the streets of Paris, they built a subterranean cinema whose discovery this week sent the city’s police into a frenzy. ”They freaked out completely,” Lazar, their spokesperson, said happily.
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/ 10 September 2004
Finish mobile phone giant Nokia is to experiment with a cellphone that shows television programmes, the company said on Friday. The test, which involves Nokia, the British television broadcaster ntl, Sony and mobile phone operator O2, will see television programmes beamed to 500 mobile users in and around Oxford in Britain.
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/ 10 September 2004
The Serbian Education Ministry bowed to a public outcry and reinstated Charles Darwin’s theory of human evolution to the school programme. Earlier this week, Education Minister Ljiljana Colic, who maintains she prays every night to a Serbian saint for enlightenment in her work, said that she had scrapped Darwin’s theory from the eighth-grade curriculum.
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/ 10 September 2004
Briton Simon Mann, the alleged brains behind a plot to stage a coup in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, was on Friday sentenced to seven years in jail by a Zimbabwe court for attempting to illegally purchase weapons. A group of 65 other suspected mercenaries was sentenced to 12 months in jail while the two men who flew a plane to Harare in March to pick up weapons were given 16-month jail sentences.
‘Wonga list’ reveals alleged backers
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/ 10 September 2004
The Democratic Alliance has called on Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula to take urgent steps to end the escapes from custody of awaiting-trial prisoners. Resources invested in investigating and arresting alleged criminals would be wasted if they escaped before standing trial, DA MP Roy Jankielsohn said in a statement on Thursday.
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/ 10 September 2004
The United States held talks with disarmament officials from major countries on Friday as it steps up pressure on Iran to renounce any move toward acquiring nuclear weapons, officials said. Washington wants the backing of the Group of Eight nations for its attempts to have the International Atomic Energy Agency declare Iran in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
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/ 10 September 2004
The extermination of 1 300 ostriches, that have been raised as part of an Eastern Cape black economic empowerment farming venture, started on Thursday after the birds tested positive for bird flu. All the birds are in Salem, near Grahamstown. ”The consequential loss of this will run up to R350 000 over the next three months,” said local Agri-Business managing director Martin Fick.
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/ 10 September 2004
Angola has expelled 418 foreigners, mostly Congolese, as part of its ongoing crackdown on diamond traffickers, police commander Tito Munana was quoted as saying in newspaper reports on Friday. The foreigners were part of a group of 1 005 people detained last month as part of Operation Diamond launched by police and the army in December last year to end trafficking in resources.