One of the world’s biggest mining companies has been given permission to open up an enormous mine on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar which will involve digging up some of the world’s most unique forest. The decision has outraged campaigners at Friends of the Earth, who had opposed the plans from the outset.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma expressed her condolences, on behalf of President Thabo Mbeki, on Sunday at the death of British Labour Party MP Robin Cook (59). ”The people of South Africa have indeed lost a dear friend and a hero,” she said.
A Russian mini-submarine that was trapped for nearly three days under the Pacific Ocean surfaced on Sunday with all seven people aboard alive after a British remote-controlled vehicle cut away the undersea cables that had snarled it. All seven aboard the AS-28 mini-submarine appeared to be in satisfactory condition, naval spokesman Captain Igor Dygalo said.
Businessman and ANC funder Sandi Majali on Saturday lost a desperate bid to stop the Sunday Times from publishing an article about his background, the newspaper said. Majali, CEO of Imvume Management, the company at the centre of the Oilgate debacle, tried to interdict the paper from publishing details of his youth and photographs of his family home in the Eastern Cape.
A Tunisian airliner heading for an emergency landing in Sicily ditched into rough seas off the Mediterranean island, and at least 13 of the 39 people aboard died, Italian authorities and airline officials said. Some of the 23 survivors clung to the wing or fuselage as they screamed to rescuers.
South Africa’s car industry is expected to notch up record sales and exports this year, revved up by an increased purchasing power and a healthy economy, manufacturers and analysts say. More than 45 000 new cars were sold last month, up 19,4% from the same month in 2004, when new car sales hit an all-time high, from top-end imported ”supercars” to the cheapest models on the market.
Free from the British detention centre where he had been on the brink of despair, a Zimbabwean asylum seeker has £10 () to his name — not enough for the train fare needed to report to immigration officers, which could mean another trip back to detention.
Discovery‘s seven astronauts on Saturday carried out final preparations for their attempt to land their stricken space shuttle. In a critical manoeuvre, pilot Jim Kelly freed the shuttle from the International Space Station and inched the craft away from its docking port before firing the spaceship’s jets to reposition it for its voyage home on Monday.
As they lay dying amid the ruins of their city, the victims of the Hiroshima bomb craved one thing above all — water. On Saturday morning cups of water were brought as symbolic offerings as, 60 years to the day after the city was vapourised, Hiroshima remembered its dead.
Saudi Arabia officially warned Britain of an imminent terrorist attack on London just weeks ahead of the 7 July bombings after calls from one of al-Qaeda’s most wanted operatives were traced to an active cell in the United Kingdom. The Saudi official said: ”It was clear to us that there was a terror group planning an attack in the UK.”