The United States’s 160th richest person, a billionaire who made his money from the 1990s hi-tech boom, has been accused of planning to build a ”secret and convenient lair” underneath his California mansion dedicated to drug-taking and sex with prostitutes.
The BBC suspended some senior editors on Thursday after the public broadcaster unearthed a string of fake phone-in competitions that tarnished its reputation and torpedoed the trust of viewers. It is the biggest crisis faced by the BBC since it locked horns with the British government over its coverage of Iraq.
Chinese actress-turned-director Xu Jinglei became the world’s most widely read blogger this month when her blog logged 100-million page views within about 600 days. And Xu, who has a reputation for a high intellect and integrity, has done it without writing about sex or providing a catalogue of kiss-and-tell stories.
The drunk-driving case against Judge Nkola Motata of the Pretoria High Court was postponed in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Thursday. Motata was arrested on January 5 after crashing his car into a wall in Hurlingham in Johannesburg.
Zanzibar will soon privatise its clove industry in a bid to revive what was once the Indian Ocean Islands’ main foreign exchange earner, the archipelago’s finance minister said on Thursday. Cloves were once the main foreign exchange earner on the so called ”spice islands”, but the industry collapsed in the 1980’s.
The most important haul of Viking treasure unearthed in Britain in more than 150 years was announced on Thursday by the British Museum. Father and son metal-detecting duo David and Andrew Whelan discovered 617 silver coins, a gilt silver vessel and a gold arm-ring near Harrogate in Yorkshire, northern England — former Viking territory.
Two suicide bomb attacks killed at least 33 people in Pakistan on Thursday as a militant backlash intensified following the army’s storming of radical mosque in Islamabad earlier this month. A wave of bomb attacks since a siege and assault on the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, complex, a militant stronghold in the capital, has swept across Pakistan.
Potchefstroom will pay a reward to anybody positively identifying people who vandalise traffic signs or street-name signs, the municipality said on Thursday. Municipal spokesperson Kaizer Mohau said the reward was 10% of the value of the property, with a minimum of R50 and a maximum of R500.
The Lebanese army shelled al-Qaeda-inspired militants cornered in small parts of a Palestinian refugee camp on Thursday and security sources said two more soldiers were killed in the fighting. They said one soldier was killed on Wednesday and the body of another was pulled from rubble in Nahr al-Bared camp, raising the army toll to 111 dead.
Zimbabwean police summoned a leader of the country’s main union organisation to answer charges on Thursday that he called for President Robert Mugabe’s overthrow in a May Day speech, the movement said. A spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions confirmed secretary general Wellington Chibebe had gone to Harare’s main police station.