The German Touring Car championships (Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters or DTM) is a racing series that takes place in and around Germany and, while not receiving as much international coverage as other racing championships, is a hotly contested series.
Deposed Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has resigned as head of his Thai Rak Thai party, triggering the dissolution of its entire executive in the wake of last month’s military coup. The billionaire telecoms tycoon remains in exile in London while an army-appointed anti-corruption panel investigates his assets and business dealings.
The tiny Southern African kingdom of Lesotho celebrates its 40th anniversary of independence from Britain on Wednesday by unveiling a new flag to replace a martial one introduced after a 1986 coup. Deputy Prime Minister Lesao Lehohla said the flag — whose unveiling will cap national celebrations — showed ”a nation at peace with itself and at peace with its neighbours”.
Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa won a second term in office in an election his challenger Michael Sata accused him of rigging, official results showed on Monday. The Electoral Commission of Zambia announced the final results after Sata conceded defeat but accused Mwanawasa of stealing victory.
Worldwide spending on weapons is expected to reach record levels this year at a time when the arms industry is increasingly able to avoid export controls, human rights and aid agencies say in a report published on Monday. By the end of the year, military spending is estimated to reach 058-billion, about 15 times the amount spent on international aid.
The next secretary general of the United Nations is almost certain to be South Korea’s Foreign Minister, Ban Ki-Moon, after a straw poll of the Security Council in New York on Monday night suggested he commanded overwhelming support. In the fourth such poll of the 15 Security Council members, 14 indicated they supported Ban’s candidacy, with the remaining one offering no opinion.
A dairy truck driver with a grudge burst into a one-room Amish schoolhouse on Monday and killed three girls execution style before committing suicide in the third deadly United States school shooting in the past week, authorities said. Eight other girls were wounded and CNN reported that one of them died several hours after the assault.
Ever since the Hyundai Getz arrived in South Africa in 2003, it’s been a winner for AMH, importers of the Korean brand. Although Hyundai doesn’t report sales figures, rumour has it that about 1 000 of the little cars are sent off to new homes each month, which makes it a serious player in a hotly contested segment — for every Getz sold, there’s a Volkswagen, Toyota, Renault or other brand salesperson crying into their tea.
In the early stages of Somalia’s civil war, most people had only two options, says Hadith Oslan, a Somali refugee living in Cape Town: to fight or to run. Oslan chose to run, fleeing his country’s political turmoil. ”I thought I would be safer here,” he says. Oslan (26) left Somalia and his family in 2003, moving to neighbouring Kenya.
Two young United States scientists, Andrew Fire and Craig Mello, on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discovering how to silence malfunctioning genes, a breakthrough which could lead to an era of new therapies to reverse crippling disease.