No image available
/ 26 December 2007
Oil prices of near per barrel caused alarm in consuming countries in 2007, and analysts forecast another tense crude market next year with triple-figure records a real prospect. Despite a murky outlook for the world economy, crude prices are seen settling at elevated levels.
No image available
/ 26 December 2007
Online social-networking websites saw their ranks swell and values soar in 2007 as everyone from moody teenagers and mellow music lovers to mate-seeking seniors joined online communities. Seven out of the 10 hottest topics that triggered Google internet queries during the year involved social networking.
No image available
/ 26 December 2007
A tiger that mauled a zookeeper last year escaped from its pen at the San Francisco Zoo on Tuesday, killing one man and injuring two others before police shot it dead, authorities said. The three men were in their 20s; they were together and were not zoo employees, a San Francisco police spokesperson said.
No image available
/ 26 December 2007
Survivors prayed at mass graves and mosques on Wednesday to mark the third anniversary of the Asian tsunami, while warning sirens sent hundreds fleeing beaches during a drill to test an alert network established since the disaster. The waves on December 26 2004 killed about 230Â 000 people in 12 Indian Ocean nations.
No image available
/ 26 December 2007
Wrapped Christmas presents lay strewn across a KwaZulu-Natal highway following a horrific accident that claimed the lives of five people on Tuesday. Bayview police Commissioner Superintendent Rajen Ramchunder said a car travelling into Chatsworth hit a traffic island and went into oncoming traffic.
No image available
/ 26 December 2007
Israel and the Palestinians head into 2008 pledging to seal an ever-elusive peace deal by the end of the year, but with their revived negotiations off to a rocky start. The talks held since the two sides relaunched the Middle East peace process after a nearly seven-year hiatus have been overshadowed by expansion of Israeli settlements.
No image available
/ 26 December 2007
When the history of climate change is written, 2007 will deserve a chapter all to itself. In just 12 months, global warming has been elevated to the great challenge of our time, a cause for public and celebrities alike, a Nobel-winning issue and a headache for politicians of every rank.
No image available
/ 26 December 2007
It was the kind of breakthrough scientists had dreamed of for decades and its promise to help cure disease appears to be fast on the way to being realised. Researchers in November announced they were able to turn the clock back on skin cells and transform them into stem cells, the mutable building blocks of organs and tissues.
No image available
/ 26 December 2007
A giant kite designed to help slash the spiralling cost of fuel consumption could herald the winds of change for commercial cargo shipping. The first freighter to be fitted with the hi-tech sail was launched in the north German port of Hamburg in December by Eva Luise Koehler, wife of German President Horst Koehler.
No image available
/ 26 December 2007
Malaysia’s drive to woo investment is losing traction, as efforts to get rid of red tape and inept bureaucrats falter, threatening to put it further behind neighbouring Singapore. A year after the authorities vowed to speed up the business approval process, businessmen are still battling unwieldy procedures and inert government staff.