United Nations chief Kofi Annan vowed on Monday that the international community will do everything in its power to ensure the success of presidential elections due in Sierra Leone next year. ”We will spare no effort to ensure that it succeeds,” Annan said during a meeting with UN staff in Freetown.
A huge asteroid, known as 2004 XP14, skimmed about 432 820km from the Earth late on Sunday and early on Monday. That’s slightly farther away than the moon. It was expected to be visible as a small moving dot to amateur sky watchers with good telescopes in North America and as a fainter object viewed from Europe.
Israeli army chief Dan Halutz on Monday rejected a 24-hour ultimatum set by the captors of an Israeli soldier held in the Gaza Strip who are demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners. ”We will not give in to any blackmailing or to any ultimatum put forth by any terror organisation, and in this specific case, by Hamas,” Halutz told reporters.
The National Prosecuting Authority on Monday started exhuming remains of eight Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) cadres who were killed in the apartheid era between the years 1984 and 1986 and buried as unidentified paupers at Mmabatho cemetery in the North West province.
Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo once had a notice posted at the gate of his farm and presidential retreat: ”No dogs and journalists allowed.” Obasanjo saw it as a joking reference to what he considered unfair criticism from the press. The sign is gone, but tensions between the president and the press linger.
London’s buses and underground trains will remain vulnerable to terrorist attacks for a long time, the city’s transport chiefs said. Those working to protect the British capital’s transport network "have not found the magic formula any more than Madrid, New York, Tel Aviv or Paris", said Tim O’Toole, managing director of London Underground.
Telkom said on Monday there has been no discussions on the sale of the South African telecommunications group. The group said it had taken note of speculative reports in the weekend press that United Kingdom group Vodafone was interested in a takeover bid of the fixed-line operator.
More than 30 people were killed on Monday when a metro train derailed in the eastern Spanish city of Valencia in an apparent accident, as pilgrims began gathering ahead of a papal visit, regional officials said. An interior ministry spokesperson said any terrorist link had been "completely ruled out".
Sentech has been given the go-ahead to roll out digital terrestrial television and take South Africa’s TV industry into the digital age. Sentech will play a major role in the 2010 World Cup by ensuring that South Africa’s analogue broadcasting infrastructure is upgraded to a digital-ready terrestrial system.
The co-chief executive of the European aerospace group EADS and the head of its Airbus subsidiary paid with their jobs on Sunday for the crisis that has wiped billions of euros off the value of the company. The two companies issued terse statements announcing EADS’s French co-boss Noel Forgeard and Airbus’s head Gustav Humbert, a German, were stepping down.