Three of the rescuers attempting to find six workers trapped in a Utah mine since last week have been killed following a cave-in, officials said on Thursday. Additionally, six rescuers were injured, said Tammy Kikuchi, a spokesperson with Utah’s department of natural resources.
There might be millions of characters in the Chinese language, but English letters and even symbols are increasingly being used as names in China. In one of the strangest names, parents tried to call their son "@", while other people have used transliterated English names to make their own sound more Western, the <i>First</i> newspaper reported.
Wouter Basson has been named as a co-conspirator in the indictment in the case against former law and order minister Adriaan Vlok, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Thursday. Vlok is facing attempted murder charges for the poisoning of former South African Council of Churches general secretary Frank Chikane.
A two-day summit of Southern African leaders closes in Lusaka, Zambia, on Friday with observers eagerly anticipating word on two reports on efforts to resolve the crisis in neighbouring Zimbabwe. South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki was due to report to the summit on his efforts to broker a stalemate between Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition.
Peruvians pulled hundreds of dead from the rubble of homes and churches on Thursday and bodies piled up on street corners after a huge earthquake ravaged the country’s central coast. CNN reported that 510 people were killed and 1 500 injured in the 8,0-magnitude quake on Wednesday night.
When the first CDs rolled off the presses at the Philips factory near Hanover, Germany, on August 17 1982, nobody realised these newfangled compact discs would revolutionise entertainment. By the 1990s, CDs had not only nearly pushed out vinyl records but also paved the way for other uses of the digital disc.
There is growing tension within the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) about its political mandate. Union leaders appear to be deeply divided over who should succeed Thabo Mbeki as ANC president in December. Although Cosatu will not have voting powers at the ANC’s elective conference, it resolved at its ninth congress last year that its members should actively participate in identifying the ANC leadership that will be sympathetic to the interests of the working class.
Mauritius is an increasingly popular destination for wealthy South Africans looking for a contingency plan when developments in South Africa make them nervous, specifically crime and the destabilisation Zimbabwe might bring to the region. Mauritius is only too happy to oblige these highly skilled workers who are in demand worldwide.
Editing your own entry on Wikipedia is usually the province of vain celebrities, but a new website has uncovered dozens of companies that have been editing the site in order to improve their public image. The Wikipedia Scanner has unearthed a catalogue of organisations massaging entries, including the CIA and the British Labour party.
As South African President Thabo Mbeki prepared to present his progress report on the mediation process in Zimbabwe to regional leaders gathered at this week’s Southern African Development Community summit, Zimbabwean Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa was insisting that there was no need for political reform in Zimbabwe.