The four distinguished visitors looked on in awe at the sight before them. Exit Glacier in Alaska’s Kenai Fjords national park is one of continental America’s most imposing monuments, and last week it was at its most impressive — a hulk of ice and snow imperceptibly making its way toward the sea.
Pope Benedict XVI wrapped up his first foreign tour on Sunday with an uncompromising warning that Catholics must strictly follow the church’s teachings. Addressing nearly one million young pilgrims, many of whom had camped overnight in a muddy field outside Cologne, the pope said that Christians should not choose the bits of doctrine they liked and ignore the rest.
Iraq’s oil exports were shut down on Monday by a power cut that darkened parts of central and southern Iraq, including the country’s only functioning oil export terminals, oil officials said. Exports through the country’s other main route, the northern export pipeline to Turkey, have long been halted by incessant sabotage.
Blue Bulls flanker forward Danie Rossouw will join the Springbok rugby squad on Tuesday in Dunedin after he received the call on Saturday night to replace his injured provincial teammate Pedrie Wannenburg. Wannenburg returned home after he sustained an injury to his lower back during the Springbok’s penultimate training session before the Tri-Nations clash with the Wallabies.
Six youth organisations on Sunday condemned last week’s raids on the houses and associates of former deputy president Jacob Zuma. The organisations said they doubted if Zuma would have a fair trial and congratulated his body guards for ”attempting to redeem the dignity of our deputy president”.
Thousands of Zimbabweans made homeless by the government’s slum clearance are living in ”desperate” conditions, according to a clandestine video smuggled out and released by Amnesty International. The video was made earlier this month at Hopley Farm, outside Harare, and shows a makeshift camp with tents of sheeting.
The executions are carried out at dawn on Haqlania bridge, the entrance to Haditha. A small crowd usually turns up to watch even though the killings are filmed and made available on DVD in the market the same afternoon. One of last week’s victims was a young man in a black tracksuit.
FBI agents have thwarted an alleged plan by an Ohio couple to sell a 15-year-old girl in exchange for a packet of cocaine. Police say Pamela Tilley and Gregory Lowery drove about 110km from their home to hand the girl over to a drugs dealer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she was destined to become a child prostitute.
Parisian book-lovers desirous of a dose of Dumas in the dead of night or some Stendhal on a Sunday can turn to a new development in automated distribution — the book vending machine. Five bright yellow Livre à toute heure machines, stocking 25 contemporary and classic titles, have been installed around the city over the past six weeks.
A Kenyan Cabinet minister has made an outspoken attack on white settlers, telling a public rally that farmers of British origin ”will have to go away”, in the latest spat in a feud with the British government over allegations of corruption. Transport Minister Chris Murungaru, who launched the attack at a public rally at the weekend, was banned from travelling to Britain last month.