The foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany met the top Iranian negotiator in Geneva on Wednesday in a final bid to stop Iran pressing ahead with plans to resume its uranium-conversion activities. Iranian negotiators warned that the meeting was heading for deadlock amid plans to reopen a nuclear plant in central Iran.
The urban unrest over services delivery in South African towns shows fault lines that, if exploited, could generate conflict the country does not need, President Thabo Mbeki said on Wednesday. He said there is nothing to suggest South Africa is threatened by the ”centrifugal tensions” that have caused the collapse of other African states.
A surfer has received 100 stitches after being attacked by a shark at the mouth of the Kei River in the Eastern Cape on Wednesday. National Sea Rescue Institute spokesperson Craig Lambinon said Jay Catarall (32) was surfing with two other people when the shark bit him on both buttocks and the back of both legs.
Iraqi and American forces said on Wednesday they have arrested two top aides to al-Qaeda’s frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a day after the country’s most wanted man was reported wounded. ”One of the most wanted people” in northern Iraq, Mullah Kamel al-Assawadi, was arrested after he tried to bribe his way past a checkpoint.
A massive power outage caused chaos in Moscow on Wednesday, stranding about 20 000 people in underground metro tunnels, disrupting traffic above ground and leaving large sections of the Russian capital without electricity. One report said effects were felt as far as Tula, 300km south of Moscow.
The bodies of all four workers trapped under a tonne of sand in a foundation trench outside a water-sport shop in Randburg were excavated on Wednesday. Emergency personnel were at the site early on Wednesday, trying to locate the workers who had been trapped under the sand since Tuesday.
A powerful car bomb slightly injured three people in the Spanish capital, Madrid, on Wednesday, and officials blamed the armed Basque separatist group ETA. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero last week won controversial parliamentary backing for a plan to open talks with ETA if the group agrees to disband.
Cigarette breaks at the office could be a thing of the past with the introduction of a new smokeless tobacco product — a discreet, miniature ”tea bag”. An alternative to cigarettes, Snus is a small bag placed under the user’s upper lip, said British American Tobacco South Africa MD David Crow.
The Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday that the 62 prisoners still on death row should have their death sentences set aside and replaced as soon as possible. There is no need for another trial, as the prisoners were already tried and sentenced in an open court. The death sentence was declared unconstitutional in 1995.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il wears a pair of platform shoes to boost his height, a South Korean newspaper reported on Wednesday. The Dong-a Ilbo published a rare photograph of Kim wearing a pair of shoes with heels about 10-12cm high.