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/ 3 September 2004
The trade union Solidarity on Friday said it finds it regrettable that oil and chemicals group Sasol has not invited organised labour to join in the internal inquiry into the recent explosion at its Secunda ethylene plant. The death toll from the blast on Wednesday at Sasol Secunda ethylene plant remains at six.
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/ 3 September 2004
Austrian historians are ridiculing California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for telling the Republican National Convention that he saw Soviet tanks in his homeland as a child and left a ”socialist” country when he moved away in 1968. ”I saw tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes,” Schwarzenegger said.
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/ 3 September 2004
Apple unveiled the third generation of its iMac range of computers this week, showing off machines housed in all-in-one cases that incorporate the processors, disk drives and screen in a box that is only about 5cm thick. The range was unveiled by Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of worldwide product marketing, at the start of the five-day Apple expo in Paris.
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/ 3 September 2004
The long avenues in West Palm Beach are deserted, stores are closed and shuttered, here and there a man struggles in the damp wind to board up his windows against the impending menace of Hurricane Frances, the worst storm to hit the state of Florida in 10 years. Frances should make landfall in Florida at 8pm local time on Saturday.
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/ 3 September 2004
Up to 30 000 priceless books may have been destroyed by a fire that swept through a historic library in the eastern German city of Weimar, authorities said on Friday. The blaze broke out late on Thursday, destroying part of the roof and the top floor of the 17th-century Anna-Amalia library and spreading through the lower floors.
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/ 3 September 2004
Iraq’s senior Sunni Muslim scholars said on Friday that two French reporters held hostage for two weeks are out of danger and their release is ”a matter of time”. Reporters Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot were kidnapped by a radical Sunni group demanding Paris rescind a ban on Islamic headscarves in state schools.
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/ 3 September 2004
Sudan is ready to discuss the deployment of additional African Union monitors in Darfur in response to calls for an increased international presence in the troubled western region — but is still opposed to the deployment in Darfur of foreign peacekeepers with a broader mandate than AU observers monitoring ceasefire violations.
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/ 3 September 2004
The Boeremag treason trial on Friday stopped unexpectedly when a state witness claimed he has proof that Boeremag leader Tom Vorster was a CIA and military intelligence agent. A defence advocate said the claims might result in the defence demanding a trial-within-a-trial to establish the truth of the claims.
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/ 3 September 2004
South Africa’s official opposition leader, Tony Leon, says that Patricia de Lille’s Independent Democrats and Pieter Mulder’s Freedom Front Plus are the handmaidens of one-party dominance by the African National Congress and accuses the two opposition parties of existing only through ”cannibalising the opposition”.
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/ 3 September 2004
Two years after Côte d’Ivoire plunged into a low-level civil war following a rebel uprising against President Laurent Gbagbo, the West African state remains bitterly divided, with only one of 10 new laws aimed at reconciling the country passed. Another touchy issue in the country is that of foreigners claiming Ivorian nationality.