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/ 30 January 2006
Europe and the United States warned Iran over its nuclear ambitions on Monday and called on Russia and China to join in seeking United Nations action later this week, as Tehran asked for more time for a compromise. In Brussels, top officials from Britain, France and Germany met an Iranian delegation.
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/ 30 January 2006
Nam June Paik, the avant-garde composer who was credited with being the inventor of video art, has died. He was 74. Paik played a pivotal role in using video as a form of artistic expression. A member of the Fluxus art movement, Paik combined the use of music, video images and sculptures.
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/ 30 January 2006
Fireworks explosions killed 36 people and injured hundreds more in China as traditional Lunar New Year celebrations led to much mayhem as well as joy across the nation, officials and state media said on Monday. In the most serious accident, 36 people died when a storeroom full of fireworks exploded, Xinhua news agency said.
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/ 30 January 2006
The South African Communist Party has come out against a South African National Civic Organisation proposal for a presidential third term, saying the country is not short of progressive leadership. The SACP said it will never support a change of the two-term presidency.
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/ 30 January 2006
The Inkatha Freedom Party’s bid to have the sacking of 15 of its councillors reviewed will probably only happen after the local government elections, the IFP’s legal counsel said on Monday. Fifteen of the party’s councillors in the Abaqulusi municipality, near Ulundi, were sacked last year.
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/ 30 January 2006
Natural disasters were on the rise last year, leaving tens of millions of people destitute and in need of aid, but they claimed fewer lives, a United Nations monitoring body said on Monday. The overall death toll dropped to 91 900, with 73 338 of the dead in Pakistan’s quake zone alone.
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/ 30 January 2006
A German archaeological mission stumbled on a mystery with the discovery of three partial pharaonic statues in Luxor, Egyptian officials announced on Monday, because one appears to date to a later period than most previous finds at the site. Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities announced the discovery on Monday.
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/ 30 January 2006
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) appealed on Monday for -million in aid to Sudan, saying aid coupled with long-term development is crucial to lasting peace there. The agency said that despite a peace accord in 2005, Sudan’s humanitarian needs for 2006 ”remain immense”.
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/ 30 January 2006
Nigerian insurgents released four kidnapped foreign contractors on Monday, but immediately vowed to press home a series of violent attacks against the country’s key oil and gas industries. ”We will shortly carry out greatly significant attacks,” said the militants in a statement from an e-mail account used by the hostage takers.
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/ 30 January 2006
International experts on the sea turtle met on the West African archipelago of São Tome on Monday for a two-day conference on saving the creatures from extinction. The conference aims to encourage the local authorities and population to protect the turtles, which lay their eggs on the islands’ beaches.