Charles Haughey, who served three terms as Ireland’s prime minister, died on Tuesday at his home in Dublin after a long battle with cancer, the government said. He was 80. ”It is a very sad occasion, and marks the passing of an era,” said Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern.
The South African Council of Churches (SACC) and United States civil rights leader Jesse Jackson on Wednesday resolved to develop a strategic partnership. Jackson and SACC general secretary Eddie Makue said the partnership will see the two collaborating on a variety of development projects.
A meeting called by NGOs to discuss a controversial City of Cape Town beggar by-law was disrupted on Wednesday when a city councillor was asked to leave. The by-law outlaws a number of alleged offences, such as intentionally touching or causing physical contact with another person.
The Southern Spears have applied to the high court to force SA Rugby to include the newly formed franchise in both this year’s Currie Cup and next year’s Super 14 competitions. They have literally thrown the ball into the SA Rugby court to show why the resolution adopted by the president’s council of the South African Rugby Union on June 8 last year should no longer be binding.
Creating a seventh electricity distributor to service smaller municipalities will help save the country’s ailing network from imminent failure, Eskom said on Wednesday. ”The difficulty one will face in time to come is that we may very well have the capacity being generated, but find that there is no capacity locally to distribute,” Eskom CEO Thulani Gcabashe said.
Apparently more at ease with patrol than petrol, blundering London police officers filled up their vehicles with the wrong fuel 150 times last year, the Metropolitan Police Authority said on Tuesday. The gaffes were revealed in its latest figures on driving safety.
French researchers have given scientific backing to what shepherds have intuitively known for thousands of years: that the lamb that bleats most and loudest has the best chance of survival. A research team used digital recorders to record lambs’ bleats and matched this with the mother’s response.
A Turkish student said on Sunday he was poised to set a record at a nationwide university entrance exam … by giving the wrong answer to all 180 questions. Speaking to reporters after Sunday’s exam, which 1,5-million youths sat, Sefa Boyar said he was hopeful he would achieve the record.
A Florida dog that chomped for help by cellphone, saving the life of her owner in a diabetic seizure, fetched a humanitarian award in Miami on Monday. Belle the beagle dialled the emergency number 911 on her owner Kevin Weaver’s cellphone last February when he began to convulse and lapsed into unconsciousness.
Floods and landslides triggered by torrential rain have killed at least 111 people in Indonesia’s South Sulawesi province and left a further 101 missing, an official said on Wednesday. The disaster, which has hit at least seven districts in the province after two days of torrential rain, is the latest in a series of similar tragedies to hit the world’s biggest archipelago this year.