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/ 11 October 2006
A passenger train from Luxembourg collided with a goods train in north-eastern France on Wednesday, killing about 12 people, state SNCF railways said. ”About 10 passengers have died as well as the two drivers of the trains,” SNCF said in a statement. Several other passengers were believed to be injured. Rail officials said the trains were travelling in opposite directions on the same stretch of track.
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/ 11 October 2006
About 1,4-million people in Zimbabwe will need food aid in the six months until the next summer harvest despite improved output from last season, a United Nations World Food Programme official said on Wednesday. President Robert Mugabe’s government has forecast production of 1,8-million tonnes of the staple maize grain for the 2005/06 season.
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/ 11 October 2006
South Africa’s manufacturing output rose by an unadjusted 4,2% in volume terms in the year to August, a slower rate than the 5,9% rise in the previous month, data showed on Wednesday. Compared with July, manufacturing production in volume terms fell by a seasonally adjusted 0,7%, Statistics South Africa said.
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/ 11 October 2006
Mpumalanga police fear an increase in farm killings in the province, a police spokesperson said on Wednesday. Last week, three separate farm attacks were reported near Malelane, Lydenburg and Barberton in which a farm worker was shot, a family was robbed and another woman seriously wounded with her own gun after she surprised robbers.
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/ 11 October 2006
South African diplomats in London will not be subjected to lie-detector tests to find out who leaked information about the recall of a senior official, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Wednesday. ” … We do not believe that any of our diplomatic staff in London would have leaked the information since it was already in the public domain,” said spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa.
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/ 11 October 2006
About 153-million poor people with vision problems have no access to basic eye care, causing missed educational and work opportunities, the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday. The United Nations agency said a sight test and glasses or contact lenses could improve children’s prospects at school and their parents’ job successes across the developing world.
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/ 11 October 2006
The Tourism Business Council of South Africa has a new CEO, Mmatsatsi Marobe, who stepped into her role on October 1. ”I am committed to taking the TBCSA to a new level of service delivery and to bringing together public and private partners to realise the potential of tourism in the country,” Marobe said in a statement.
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/ 11 October 2006
The British-based author and former publisher Carmen Callil has become embroiled in a growing dispute over the limits of freedom of speech in the United States after a party celebrating her new book on Vichy France was cancelled because of the opinion she expresses about the modern state of Israel.
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/ 11 October 2006
Pay-channel M-Net is inviting people to enter for Culture Shock, a new reality television show which will see families from two different cultures swapping homes and lives for two weeks. Carl Fischer, head of M-Net original productions, said on Wednesday the show would not seek to pit stereotypes against each other.
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/ 11 October 2006
Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, vowed on Tuesday to pursue the killers of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, calling her murder a ”disgustingly cruel crime” which would not go unpunished, whatever the motive. Putin said the killing had inflicted much greater damage on his government than any of the journalist’s sharply critical writing.