Israeli forces were set for a showdown on Thursday with the final hard core of Gaza Strip settlers, surrounding synagogues where thousands of religious Jews had taken refuge as the country struggled to absorb the traumatic impact of ending its 38-year occupation of Gaza.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has turned down an offer from former Mozambican leader Joaquim Chissano to mediate between the Zimbabwe government and the opposition, the former president said on Wednesday. ”President Mugabe said clearly there is no need [for] such talks,” Chissano told reporters.
The JSE opened weaker on Thursday on continued profit-taking as well as concerns about the level of the oil price and its impact on inflation and global interest rates, traders said. By 9.14am, the all share index lost 0,28%, Industrials and financials climbed 0,23% and 0,02% respectively, while the banks index was 0,1% in the red.
A 4 200-year-old hoard of gold, comparable to the fabulous treasures of Troy, has been found in Bulgaria to the delight of archaeologists desperate to beat looters to tombs in the former communist country. The miniature pieces were unearthed in an ancient tomb in Dabene, 120km east of the capital, Sofia.
The families of the victims of the serial killer known as BTK — bind, torture, kill — on Wednesday heard and saw in graphic detail the depravity of the crimes he committed over more than 30 years. Dennis Rader terrorised and taunted the residents of Wichita, Kansas, committing 10 murders and sending rambling messages and poems to news outlets and the police.
The British director Paul Greengrass is to direct a film based on the events of 9/11, the third film project by a major Hollywood studio to tackle the subject. With the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaching, Hollywood and some television networks are putting aside the reticence they have shown in dealing with the events of 2001.
Two car bombs turned a Baghdad bus station into a slaughterhouse on Wednesday and a third bomb ambushed emergency services, killing at least 38 people and wounding dozens. The coordinated strikes during the morning rush hour shattered a relative lull in the violence and were intended to maximise sectarian tension.
It was to be his last day in Gaza, but Sagi Ifrach planted himself on the roof of the only home he has ever known yesterday morning and declared that it would take the entire Israeli army to move him. His parents and siblings had left two days earlier, resigned to the futility of resisting Ariel Sharon’s determination to clear Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip.
It would be a mistake to dismiss Israel’s dissolution of its settlements in the Gaza Strip as an irrelevancy, as some supporters of the Palestinian cause are prone to do. There is a powerful symbolism to the spectacle of Israeli troops cracking down on recalcitrant settlers, and in the fact that the architect of the withdrawals, was a prime mover behind the settlements after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
The bond was forged more than 30 years ago when Israel’s security preoccupation meshed with the visions of a messianic minority to claim the spoils of war as a God-given right. The rush to establish Jewish settlements on the newly-occupied West Bank hilltops.