Despite gradually easing its iron grip on Burma’s main city on Thursday, the junta continued to round up scores of people and grill hundreds more arrested during last week’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy marches. One freed monk said some had been beaten when they refused to answer questions about their identity.
War has been good to Masumbuko Kakera. The peace is making him richer still but the wily Congolese trader could not have become one of the wealthiest men in Goma without the years of foreign invasion, occupation and rebel governments, besides the help of nature’s occasional assault.
Typhoon Lekima lashed Vietnam and southern China with torrential rains and high winds, killing at least seven people, damaging hundreds of homes and disrupting air, sea and train travel. The storm, which killed at least five people in the Philippines at the weekend, swept into Vietnam from the sea on Wednesday night
South African selectors have named Vernon Philander to replace the injured Morne Morkel in their squad touring Pakistan. Fast bowler Morkel fractured his left foot during training before the first Test and has been advised to rest for at least six to eight weeks.
Forty years after the death of Ernesto ”Che” Guevara, the turbulent life of Cuba’s revolutionary hero continues to inspire films and books, while his stoic image and self-sacrifice have become iconic for leftists worldwide. His legacy remains as vivid today in communist-ruled Cuba as it was, with schoolchildren still instructed to pledge each morning that: ”Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che.”
Media group Naspers is to make a public tender offer to acquire up to 100% of Gadu Gadu, a Warsaw-listed Polish internet company for a total investment of about $155-million, it said on Thursday. Naspers will extend an offer to acquire 100% of the shares of Gadu Gadu SA at a tender price of 23,50 z³oty per share.
Almost 600 miners of the 3 200 trapped underground have been rescued from Harmony Gold’s Elandsrand mine on Thursday morning. The cause of the accident was in dispute, the National Union of Mineworkers attributing it to a rock fall, the company saying a pipe carrying chilled water down the shaft, to cool air underground, broke and damaged equipment.
The World Bank encouraged foreign companies to destructively log the world’s second largest forest, endangering the lives of thousands of Congolese Pygmies, according to a report on an internal investigation by senior bank staff and outside experts.
What shameful times we live in, buffeted by spin and lies. When the events of the past two weeks are recorded in history, will they appear as the turning point? When a president failed to rise above his personal ambitions, yank the skeletons from his party’s closet and secure democracy and its constitutionally protected institutions?
Rescue teams working to save 3 200 miners trapped deep underground in Harmony Gold’s Elandsrand mine brought 1 700 to the surface on Thursday morning, mine and union officials said. Harmony said the rescue operation was going smoothly and that a secondary lift was bringing up batches of miners.