Thousands of people were killed on Saturday when a massive earthquake measuring 7,6 on the Richter scale shook parts of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, flattening houses and sweeping whole villages away. The confirmed tally of deaths has been pushed above 3 000.
The Democratic Alliance is setting up an internal commission to deliberate on the diversity of its public representatives — an issue highlighted when four of its senior black MPs defected to the African National Congress and another left to start his own party. The DA lost its court challenge against the five floor-crossers.
Sibusiso Zuma laid the ghost of an eerie international goal drought to rest by scoring the goals that gave Bafana Bafana a 2-2 draw against the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) at Durban’s Absa Stadium on Saturday and a nervy, at times uneasy place in next year’s 16-team African Nations Cup finals in Egypt.
Mudslides and floods sparked by Tropical Storm Stan have killed 508 people in Guatemala alone, a Guatemalan official said on Saturday, bringing to 610 the number killed when the storm lashed Central America and Mexico with heavy, unrelenting rains.
An earthquake measuring at least 7,6 on the Richter scale caused massive devastation on Saturday across a swathe of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, leaving more than 1Â 800 dead with fears for many more. The quake triggered deadly landslides that wiped out entire villages.
An earthquake measuring 5,4 on the Richter scale jolted southern and central Bangladesh on Saturday, whipping up high waves in the Bay of Bengal, officials said. The quake came the same day that a major earthquake struck northern Pakistan, about 2 000km north-west of Bangladesh, early on Saturday.
European countries responded swiftly to Saturday’s massive earthquake that hit Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, offering aid and funds as well as condolences. The European Union’s executive arm, said up to â,¬3-million could be approved within a day if requested by agencies working on the ground.
Community members handed over a man to the Eldorado Park police station, south of Johannesburg, on Saturday in connection with the murder of six-year-old Ghairoenisha Michaela Lee Canchi. The girl went missing on Thursday afternoon and her body was found close to her home on Friday morning. She was buried on Friday afternoon.
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and diamond mining giant De Beers have reached an agreement on wage increases and employment conditions. This follows weeks of unsuccessful negotiations between the two parties. NUM chief negotiator Peter Bailey said on Saturday that although the deal was not what the union initailly wanted, it was ”comfortable” with it ”for now”.
A film festival for movies shot on cellphones opened on Friday in Paris, aiming to take cinema a technological and creative step forward in the country that gave birth to the seventh art. The Pocket Film Festival, which was to screen pictures ranging from 30-second shorts to a full-length feature set in Rome, seeks both to showcase an emerging art form and to ask what effect it might have on mainstream cinema.