India’s prime minister on Tuesday vowed to "defeat the evil designs of terrorists" after blasts killed scores in the country’s financial capital, Mumbai, and eight others in revolt-hit Kashmir. Manmohan Singh called for calm in Mumbai and Srinagar after an emergency meeting at his official residence with Home Minister Shivraj Patil.
Pakistani officials on Tuesday ruled out the possibility of a terror attack in an airliner crash that killed 45 people, as they sent the plane’s ”black box” for analysis. The ageing Pakistani International Airlines Fokker F27 plummeted to the ground and burst into flames shortly after take-off from the central city of Multan on Monday.
New York authorities are investigating whether a doctor who survived the explosion of a four-storey home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side on Monday might have caused the blast rather than sell the home as part of a divorce judgement in his ex-wife’s favour.
At least six explosions rocked the railway network in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, during the evening rush hour on Tuesday, officials from the state-run railway told the Press Trust of India. Officials said at least 40 people died in the blasts and hundreds were injured, and the country has been put on high alert.
Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ari Larijani warned on Tuesday that a ”long road” remains ahead before Tehran’s atomic stand-off with the West can be solved, after his latest talks with European officials. ”We had very wide-ranging discussions. We were following up on the Tehran negotiations,” he said after talks with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
The cost of connectivity is the biggest factor inhibiting more access to computers, specifically in developing continents such as Africa, Microsoft chairperson Bill Gates said in Cape Town on Tuesday. ”That cost is much higher in places where there are less people connected,” Gates told an audience attending the final day of the Government Leaders Forum-Africa conference.
It is designed as an ongoing, sometimes routine meeting between President Thabo Mbeki and his team of advisers on the one hand, and the captains of South African industry on the other. But when all the camaraderie is completed at Wednesday’s get-together, Mamelodi Sundowns president Patrice Motsepe intends to exhort big businesses to support South African soccer to the hilt.
He was the 20th century’s greatest scientist, his name synonymous with genius. But while Albert Einstein’s theories are known and lauded the world over, insights into his private life are patchy and largely negative. He has been variously portrayed as a bad father, cruel to his wives and an adulterer.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday certain ”major powers” should play a bigger role in the world body, but declined to name favourites for any new permanent seats on the Security Council. ”I have always maintained that no reform to the UN will be complete without a reform of the Security Council.,” Annan said.
An apparently intoxicated Jackie Chan disrupted a concert by Taiwanese singer-songwriter Jonathan Lee in Hong Kong and exchanged insults with the audience, a news report said on Tuesday. Ming Pao Daily News said Chan suddenly jumped on stage at the concert on Monday night and demanded a duet with Lee. He then tried to conduct the band but stopped and restarted the music several times.