At least 41 people were killed on Monday and 47 injured when a packed metro train was derailed on the underground railway system of the eastern Spanish city of Valencia. ”There may be other bodies, forensic police are working intensively at the accident scene,” said Antonio Bernabe, a central government official.
The United States should be prepared to move quickly to pour aid and advisers into Cuba in the event of Fidel Castro’s death, to turn the island away from communist rule, a government report due for release this week will recommend. The report calls for -million to be put aside to step up opposition to Castro.
Justo Gallego was perched 6m up on a precarious plank on Monday, slapping concrete on to yet another column in the cathedral he has been building single-handedly for 45 years. With a red woollen cap soaking up the baking midday sun and his blue coat covered in dust and drying cement, the wiry, reclusive 81-year-old was in the middle of a self-imposed working day that started at 6am.
The captors of an Israeli soldier abducted last week do not want to kill the serviceman despite the expiry of an ultimatum to Israel. ”Some people thought that the groups that carried out the operation will kill him but our Islamic values tell us that prisoners should be respected and not killed,” said Abu Muthanna, a spokesperson for the Islamic Army.
Three of South Africa’s major banks said accounts had been hacked and that thousands of rands had been stolen, according to media reports on Tuesday. The hackers had found a way of gaining entry to personal or business accounts and then transferring money from these accounts to either cellphone or Telkom prepaid accounts.
The recent Congress of South African Trade Unions discussion document argues that critics of the government’s macroeconomic strategy tend to be labelled populist, counter-revolutionary or neo-conservative. A recent article by Ronald Suresh Roberts falls neatly into this pattern and attempts to delegitimise criticism based on faulty reasoning, writes Oupa Bodibe.
Sasol and its joint venture partners in Namibia are finally starting to break their silence over a R4-billion oil contract as questions of impropriety mount around the questionable black economic empowerment deal. The Namibian Anti-Corruption Commission is investigating complaints of irregularities in the awarding of the state tender.
Thabo Mbeki’s intellectual biographer clearly sees it as his job to justify the president’s ways to South Africa. He does this not just by parroting his subject and muse but also by sallying forth to yap, Maltese poodle-style, at the president’s adversary of the moment.
Veteran journalist and former head of South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) radio news Pippa Green has turned a harsh spotlight on the SABC’s editorial culture, noting that it sometimes degenerates into "a political grazing ground for the ruling-party faithful". Green’s comments follow a series of controversies at the SABC.
Since hippies first beat the overland travel trail to Nepal in the 1960s, thousands of foreigners have flocked to monasteries to study Buddhism. Today, despite political upheaval and a decade-long Maoist insurgency, they continue to come and there are more schools than ever, many of which are now home to Westerners who donned Buddhist robes and never left.