Former Manchester United football star George Best, who has battled alcoholism since quitting the game, was in a ”serious” condition in intensive care at a London hospital on Monday, his doctor said. Best (59) was admitted to the private Cromwell hospital in central London on Saturday with influenza-like symptoms.
The mayor apologised to the bereaved on Tuesday after a stampede by fans hoping to attend a music concert left 11 dead and injured 98 in the South Korean town of Sangju. Police questioned 22 people about the accident, including five city officials, said Kim Yong-tae, the officer heading the investigating team.
Two men have been detained for questioning over the suicide bombings at three crowded restaurants on Indonesia’s Bali island, police said on Tuesday. Indonesian officials earlier said the near-simultaneous bombings that killed 22 people and apparently were planned by two Malaysians — still at large.
A former snowboard champion turned sports cameraman and a friend were convicted by a French court on Monday for making a video in which pornographic images were flash-cut into a DVD production about snowboarding. "I did it as a laugh, but it was a bad joke," Julien Joud told the court in the eastern French city of Grenoble.
The editor of Zimbabwe’s only private daily has been suspended, according to a report posted on the website of the state-run broadcaster late on Monday. Ibbo Mandaza, the founder, chief executive and editor-in-chief of the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Mirror, has been suspended with immediate effect, the report said.
The sex-crimes trial of Pretoria advocates Dirk Prinsloo and Cezanne Visser resumes in the city’s high court on Tuesday after a six-month break. The hearing is expected to kick off with evidence from officials of a children’s home from where the couple is alleged to have collected minor girls who were subsequently abused.
BG has won the right to explore in two areas of oil-rich Libya, but British Petroleum (BP) and Shell have emerged empty-handed from a new round of licensing. ”Libya is a prolific hydrocarbon province, which is well placed in the Mediterranean region for the markets of Europe and North America,” said a BG vice-president for Africa.
On a narrow winding lane on a Himalayan mountainside, past Indian army soldiers and burly, shaven-headed monks, lies a monastery at the centre of a feud that has split normally gentle Tibetans who revere a living god crowned with a black hat. Two rival factions of Tibetan Buddhism are fighting for control of the Rumtek monastery.
The first soldiers to arrive on Khalil Bashir’s doorstep in Gaza five years ago explained the new geography of his home in terms he understood only too well. His three-storey house was to be like the West Bank, the Israeli officer said, with its areas of divided security and administrative control. The Israeli army then set up a machine-gun post on the Bashirs’ terraced roof.
Turkey’s 40-year dream of joining the European Union took a momentous step forward on Monday night when both sides finally agreed to open membership talks after a marathon round of negotiations. The Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdullah Gul, flew into Luxembourg after accepting a deal on talks that could last up to 15 years.