The Beijing Olympics will lead to a boom in sales of flat-screen televisions in China, with one in four televisions sold in 2008 either a liquid-crystal display (LCD) or plasma, a Japanese study said on Monday. Only 10% of the 42-million colour televisions sold in China last year was an LCD or plasma, said a study by the economic research firm Fuji Keizai.
All-rounder Mashrafee Mortaza was the star for Bangladesh as they beat Kenya by two wickets on Sunday to win the one-day series 2-0. Having taken 3-53 in the Kenyan innings, the stylish left-hander returned to hit the winning runs that helped Bangladesh hold off a resurgent Kenyan side buoyed by a tight pace-bowling attack.
Empirical evidence suggests that gun control is a ”total failure” in curbing crime, the organisation Gun Owners of South Africa (Gosa) said on Monday. ”It creates a community where only the government, which is then free to abuse its power … and criminals own firearms,” said Gosa coordinator Charl van Wyk.
Somalia’s dominant Islamic militia on Sunday seized control of a central township near the coastline that has been a base of piracy and dozens of hijackings of ships in the Indian Ocean, officials and residents said. ”The Islamic courts are in full control of Haradere,” Sheikh Said Ali, an Islamic courts official, said of the township.
Gun battles erupted in multiple locations in southern Nigeria’s oil hub of Port Harcourt on Sunday night, and witnesses said a group of foreigners was taken hostage from a nightclub amid the shooting. A witness said he saw more than 10 people go into the nightclub and drag a group of foreigners away while shooting into the air.
<b>CDS OF THE WEEK:</b> Take a song and make it your own by not respecting the original too much and breathing new life into it, and you will succeed, writes Lloyd Gedye.
Traditional playground games such as cowboys and Indians in the heart of the United States’s old wild west are facing high noon after a proposal to outlaw toy guns. Alarmed by rising gun crime in Dallas, named the most dangerous city in the US by the FBI, councillors have advanced a plan to ban replica firearms.
The suspected ringleader of the alleged plot to blow up flights out of London’s Heathrow airport has provided details that directly link the conspiracy to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistani officials said on Sunday. The Interior Minister, Aftab Sherpao, said Rashid Rauf gave investigators ”many, many clues”.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) was mum on Monday morning about weekend media reports that its president and general secretary were ”at war”. Cosatu president Willie Madisha refused to comment on the reported strife between him and general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.
His political approach has become a byword for populism, and on Sunday President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad endowed it with a hi-tech dimension by launching his own web log. The hard-line Iranian leader’s debut on the international blogosphere came in the form of a 2 300-word tract.