Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, on Friday underwent emergency surgery for the second time after doctors discovered evidence of new bleeding in his brain. Doctors said they managed to stop the bleeding and reduce pressure in his brain after five hours of surgery, but he remained in a critical condition.
The war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is suffering the world’s deadliest humanitarian crisis, with 38 000 people dying each month mostly from easily treatable diseases, according to a study published on Friday in Britain’s leading medical journal. Nearly four million died between 1998 and 2004 alone.
Harbin’s popular annual ice festival has opened with an official declaring it free of the toxic chemicals that polluted the northern Chinese city’s water supplies late last year, state press said on Friday. The ice festival, which opened on Thursday, is one of the few tourism drawcards for Harbin, an otherwise bleak industrial city of nine million people.
Enrico di Giuseppe, a tenor who sang with the Metropolitan and New York City opera companies, has died. He was 73. Di Giuseppe died on December 31 of cancer, his wife, soprano Lorna Ceniceros, told The New York Times. While with the City Opera, he performed with Beverly Sills in many of her notable appearances.
The National Gallery in Berlin has renounced any claim to the million-dollar Edvard Munch painting Summer Day, once removed from the gallery walls and sold abroad to raise funds for the Nazi war coffers.
The artists’ community in Nieu Bethesda is divided over the arrival of black families from the township, writes Rory Carroll. Is this idyllic Karoo dorpie a microcosm of South Africa?
Kenya’s government on Friday ordered the immediate purchase of ”all available maize in the country” in an emergency bid to stave off deaths from a searing drought that has killed dozens and placed millions at risk of famine across East Africa. The Cabinet described the situation as ”very severe”.
Starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain scooped four nominations from the Screen Actors Guild on Thursday. The tale of two gay cowboys tormented by lifelong love has its sights set on an Oscar.
Oil prices rose on Friday on worries about the Middle East and natural gas regained ground as well after a mild start to winter in the United States had pushed prices to a four-and-a-half-month low. Light, sweet crude for February delivery rose 76 cents to ,55 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Motorola will soon begin selling web-enabled cellphones that feature easy access to Google’s search engine by clicking on an icon, the world’s second-largest maker of cellphones said. The company said it will integrate a Google icon on to certain internet-optimised handsets that will be distributed starting in the first quarter of this year.