Beverly Sills, one of the most popular American opera singers of the 1960s and 1970s, died on July 2 of cancer, New York’s Metropolitan Opera announced. She was 78. ”The soprano died in her home in Manhattan on July 2 after a brief battle with inoperable lung cancer,” the Met said in a statement, quoting her manager, Edgar Vincent.
France’s Ethical Fashion Show is proving extremely popular among increasingly eco-conscious consumers. Kate Carter and Rebecca Smithers report in Paris.
Twenty-four Indian police officers who had gone missing after a fierce gun battle with Maoist insurgents in the jungles of central India were found dead on Tuesday, a top officer said. The missing men were part of a group of 90 troopers who engaged the rebels for two hours in a hilly forest on Monday in the Dantewada district in the state of Chhattisgarh.
Former Indian prime minister Chandra Shekhar, who was suffering from cancer, passed away in New Delhi on July 8. He was 80. Shekhar breathed his last at 8.45am local time at the Apollo Hospital in the Indian capital where he was being treated for bone cancer for the past three months, doctors said.
One of the cruellest enforcers of Chile’s former dictatorship, the self-confessed torturer Osvaldo Romo Mena, died in prison of heart failure at the age of 70, police sources said. He died on July 4 at the Santiago prison where he was serving sentences for kidnapping dissidents in the rule of former dictator Augusto Pinochet.
British artificial-intelligence expert Donald Michie and his ex-wife, leading geneticist Dame Anne McLaren, died in a car crash on July 7, their son said. Michie (84) and McLaren (80) were killed when their car veered off a highway while they were travelling from Cambridge to the home they shared in London, Jonathan Michie said.
The City of Johannesburg is approving an average of nearly 2Â 000 building plans per month while some northern areas are experiencing growth rates of 25%. Dr Philip Harrison, executive director of development planning and urban management, said figures indicated that the city’s population would double within 20 to 25 years.
Accidents at Chinese coal mines killed nearly 1 800 people in the first half of this year, 14,3% fewer than in the same period of 2006, the Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday. But while overall deaths declined, there were more accidents where the toll numbered between 10 and 30.
Numerous metal and engineering employers have concluded agreements with unions that entail additional increases for skilled employees, Solidarity announced on Tuesday. Cape Gate has offered a 15% increase for artisans and 20% for technicians while Barloworld has offered a 10% increase plus a R1 500 skills allowance.
Astronomers using a giant telescope say they have found glimpses of the most distant — and oldest — galaxies ever seen. The light the researchers viewed originated when the universe was only 500-million years old and has been travelling through distant space for billions of years.