British police believe they have arrested the main suspects in an al-Qaeda-style bomb plot, some of whom appeared in intelligence databases on radical Islamists, sources close to the investigation said on Wednesday. Security experts were considering reducing Britain’s terrorist threat level, four days after it was raised to ”critical”.
About 700 radical Muslim students surrendered at a besieged mosque in the Pakistani capital on Wednesday, but thousands of militants remained inside a day after 16 people were killed. Hundreds of soldiers and police sealed off the mosque and imposed an indefinite curfew in the neighbourhood after Tuesday’s bloodshed.
It pays to get up early in a country where even the most basic goods are disappearing from shop shelves. Long queues of shoppers now form early in the morning at many Harare supermarkets and shops, hoping to grab essentials such as sugar and oil amid a price crisis that has sharpened already desperate consumer shortages.
The drive towards forging a United States of Africa was running out of steam on Wednesday as leaders filed away from a summit without agreeing on a timeline for creating a new government for the continent. The three-day African Union summit in Ghana was devoted to a grand debate on a union government with burning issues such as Darfur barely getting a look in.
Progress in getting the National Lottery restarted has passed a ”major milestone”, Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa said on Wednesday. Only ”shoe-shine work” remained to be done, although there was no date yet for when the lottery would resume, he told reporters in Pretoria.
Europe’s major consumer group BEUC said on Wednesday that it fears internet search giant Google’s takeover of online ad tracker DoubleClick would damage European Union privacy rights and limit consumers’ choice of web content. The association has asked European authorities to look into privacy concerns.
Thousands of Palestinian civil servants began receiving their first full salaries in 17 months on Wednesday after Israel released tens of millions of dollars of withheld tax receipts. Relieved Palestinians queued en masse outside banks, checking their names on a list or drawing cash from ATM machines.
The tense relations between South Africa and Tri-Nations partners Australia and New Zealand will be raised at a meeting among the three unions next week. The Sanzar body that runs the Tri-Nations and Super 14 will meet in Christchurch for a strategic review addressing the future of both competitions, reported the Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday.
After a three-month break the trial of a British aristocrat charged with murder in the shooting of a trespasser on his ancestral ranch resumed in Nairobi on Wednesday. Thomas Cholmondeley, son of the fifth Baron Delamere and great-grandson of Kenya’s most prominent early settler, is charged with killing poacher Robert Njoya in May 2006.
The great-great grandson of Otto von Bismarck, the statesman behind Germany’s 19th century unification, was found dead at his London flat, police said on Wednesday, after a life tainted by scandal. The body of Count Gottfried von Bismarck (44) was found at his home in the upmarket Chelsea district, reportedly surrounded by drugs paraphernalia.