At least one of the two Russian plane crashes that killed 90 people this week was the result of a terrorist attack, a top Russian security service spokesperson said on Friday. Meanwhile, an Islamic group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades claimed responsibility on Friday for the crashes of both Russian planes.
World oil prices rose on Friday on concerns over the possibility of further unrest in major producer Iraq despite a ceasefire in its holy city of Najaf, where fighting has raged for weeks, traders said. The price of London’s benchmark Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in October climbed 44 cents to ,77 per barrel in early deals.
Zimbabwe police have arrested six white commercial farmers in the northern tobacco growing district of Karoi, about 260km north of Harare. Police said the farmers had defied government orders to leave their farms with immediate effect. The country’s Commercial Farmers’ Union did not know if its members had been arrested.
Dutch bar flies who cannot wait until they are home to relieve themselves are in for a surprise in the southern town of Tilburg where a restaurant owner has put up a cold shower to discourage peeing in public, a newspaper reported on Friday. The shower head is equipped with sensors.
Japan’s capital has a 90% chance of being devastated by a major earthquake some time in the next 50 years, according to a study by a government panel. The study, released earlier this week, marked the latest attempt by scientists to address one of this quake-prone country’s most pressing concerns: when the next ”big one” will strike.
Controversy surrounding Zimbabwean Information Minister Jonathan Moyo’s purchase of the Patterson farm in the Mazowe district has deepened amid disclosures that he violated government policy and set a bad precedent for land reform. Moyo is also entangled in a row over the subdivision of a farm in Hwange where illegal poaching is reported to be rampant.
With the 2005 parliamentary election in Zimbabwe beckoning, never has the Matabeleland region witnessed so many promises of development from President Robert Mugabe’s government. Development projects worth about a trillion-Zimbabwean dollars have been promised.
Sudan’s government on Thursday defiantly dismissed a United Nations deadline for it to disarm its proxy militia in the Darfur region, insisting it would resolve the conflict there through ongoing African Union peace talks. On the fourth day of talks between the government and Darfur’s rebel groups, the parties put a row over disarmament to one side in order to decide how to tackle a mounting humanitarian crisis in the western region.
A senior health official welcomed the Cape High Court’s decision on Friday to dismiss an application aimed at overturning the medicine-pricing regulations, saying it will benefit the South African consumer. He said the judgement means that savings realised from the manufacturing side will now be passed on to the consumer.
Within hours of arriving in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea’s capital, visitors are likely to be followed by informers, stopped by the army and arrested by police, who will strip the film from their cameras, follow them to their hotel, question their motives for being there, and interrogate anyone they have talked to. John Vidal recently visited Equatorial Guinea, one of the few Western journalists to do so in recent years.