Soldiers and volunteers used their bare hands on Thursday to search for survivors buried beneath tonnes of mud and rock after landslides wiped out several Indonesian villages, leaving more than 210 people dead or missing, officials said. Twenty-six bodies have been recovered since Wednesday.
The Middle East will be ”a better place” without ailing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas said on Thursday. ”The world is on the verge of being rid of one of its worst leaders,” chief Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri told Agence France Presse.
A Turkish teenager whose brother died of bird flu also succumbed to the disease on Thursday, a Turkish doctor said, as authorities tried to determine if the siblings had contracted the worrisome H5N1 strain of the virus. If confirmed, the brother and sister would be the first people outside of Asia to die of the H5N1 strain in the latest outbreak.
The road death toll for December has risen to 1 215, the Department of Transport said on Wednesday. Spokesperson Collen Msibi said 512 of the fatalities were pedestrians, 414 were passengers and 289 were drivers. The figure is down from 1 234 reported in the same period last year.
Pretoria police have arrested 36 men in Olievenhoutbosch for public violence following clashes between South Africans and foreigners, a spokesperson said on Thursday. Tshwane municipal officials met the Olievenhoutbosch community on Wednesday in an attempt to defuse the clashes.
A police inspector was injured during a stone-throwing incident at Soshanguve, north of Pretoria, on Thursday when residents demonstrated against poor service delivery, police said. ”The protests started at 3am this morning in Orange Farm informal settlement in Soshanguve,” said Superintendent Piletji Sebola.
Distell, South Africa’s largest listed wine producer, has launched the first wines under a new brand from its ground-breaking joint venture in the Gansbaai area of the Western Cape, called Lomond Wines. Started in 2000, the Lomond project was experimental, being situated in the southern-most area in South Africa to be planted with vines.
Producers of half the world’s greenhouse gases are angling for more private investment to create cleaner energy technologies and help slow global warming. The White House said its talks with Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea will enhance rather than replace the Kyoto climate treaty that President George Bush rejected because of its mandatory cuts in carbon dioxide, methane and other gases.
While video, especially the portable kind, is expected to make the big splash at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, there is also a lot happening with devices that combine satellite radio and portable music players. Pioneer Electronics and Samsung Electronics introduced MP3 players that also include satellite radio service from XM Satellite Radio Holdings.
Rival Google may be nipping at its heels, but Microsoft wasn’t flashing any defeatist signs as it showcased its latest plans to help make living in the digital world safer, easier and more fun. ”Consumers are getting more and more connected, and software is at the centre of that,” Gates said on Wednesday.