As many as 10 Atlantic hurricanes could form in coming months, and up to four of them could hit the United States, experts said on Monday, urging residents to prepare for potentially devastating storms. ”The outlook calls for a very active 2006 season,” the National Weather Service said in a report released on Monday.
Cape mayor Helen Zille spent part of Monday afternoon briefing Capetonians on how to seek redress from the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union for damage inflicted during a violent march last week. Her spokesperson, Robert Macdonald, said about 150 to 200 people attended the meeting at the Civic Centre.
Dagga worth an estimated R3-million was seized at a house at Cape Town’s Mfuleni area, Western Cape police said on Monday. Detectives visited the house, situated at Ngogoshe Street at Mfuleni Extension 4, at about 8pm on Sunday after a tip-off by a member of the public, Inspector Bernadine Steyn said.
France, Italy and Germany — but not Britain — have paid ransoms totalling -million for the freedom of nine hostages abducted in Iraq, The Times of London claimed on Monday. The claims were immediately rejected by the three governments listed by The Times as having ”bought” the release of hostages over the past two years.
De Beers chairperson Nicky Oppenheimer and the Botswana government will launch a new joint-venture company, the Botswana Diamond Trading Company, on Tuesday, De Beers said. A number of new mining releases are also to be signed. The diamond partnership between the two goes back to before the country attained independence from Britain in 1966.
Four people were seriously injured after being thrown off moving trains on Monday morning, Metrorail said. A number of people have been thrown from moving trains in Gauteng in recent weeks — many of them working security guards believed to be targeted by their striking colleagues.
Kenyan prosecutors on Monday said a local priest plotted the murder of a septuagenarian Italian bishop in northern Kenya last year in a row over cash donated to the diocese from well-wishers. The accusation came as the prosecution opened its case in the trial of the Father Waqo Guyo Malley and five others.
Electricity shortages were slowing attempts to clear a flooded mine shaft on Monday, and community members began to lose hope for 57 miners trapped for a fourth day in China’s worst mining accident this year. ”We must go all out to rescue these men. But we also need to start preparing for the worst,” said the mayor of the nearby city Datong.
A knot of police officers rush into a burning office building to evacuate survivors. They hear a hellish rumble above and dash for haven in an elevator vestibule as the structure collapses around them. So begins Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, the first 25 minutes of which was previewed at the Cannes Film Festival.
A mechanism to force security-sector groups into negotiating is needed to resolve the current labour dispute, Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana said on Monday. ”People are constantly calling on the minister to intervene in criminal activities. What do they mean when they say intervene?” Mdladlana said in Pretoria.