Two images dominated US television screens during the prolonged battle over Terri Schiavo, who tragically plunged into an acrimonious national debate on right-to-die ethics. One showed a pretty brunette smiling into a camera for a family snapshot. The second shows an emaciated woman unable to control her grins and grimaces, blissfully unaware of the arguments over her fate.
Terri Schiavo, the severely brain damaged woman at the centre of a right-to-die controversy in the United States, died on Thursday in a Florida hospice almost two weeks after her feeding tube was cut off, a spokesperson for her parents said.
Gold Fields has obtained a court interdict to force 30 000 striking miners back to work, the company said on Thursday. ”We must now serve the interdict on the National Union of Mineworkers. But I expect they will be back at work within 24 hours,” said spokesperson Willie Jacobsz.
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Chitungwiza’s famous market stalls were empty on Thursday as vendors went to the polls in this poor town on the outskirts of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, to vote for a government that will lift them out of destitution. Meanwhile, President Robert Mugabe said his party has always been ready to talk to the country’s opposition.
The International Criminal Court was gearing up on Thursday for a possible war crimes investigation in Sudan’s violence-plagued Darfur region — an important case that could confirm the fledgling tribunal’s legitimacy. The United Nations Security Council is expected to vote on Thursday on a resolution that would authorise the prosecution of war crimes suspects
Oil prices rose on Thursday as traders digested United States government figures showing a large increase in crude inventories but a drop in gasoline stocks ahead of the driving season. Light, sweet crude on the New York Mercantile Exchange was up 15 cents at ,14 a barrel by midday in Europe.
House prices in general are less affordable now than a few years ago as house prices have risen faster than remuneration, according to banking group Absa.
Belgium’s interior minister was left red-faced on Thursday after it emerged that photos comparing United States President George Bush to a chimpanzee had been used in a police training manual. The pictures in question show a series of the US leader’s facial expressions next to shots of a chimpanzee making apparently similar faces.
The former head of Nigeria’s police force, who quit suddenly amid allegations of corruption in January, has been arrested by the country’s financial crimes watchdog and may appear in court soon, his lawyer and government officials said on Wednesday.
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President Robert Mugabe on Thursday predicted a landslide victory for his ruling party in elections that the opposition in Zimbabwe charged were not free and fair despite a campaign that broke away from the political violence of the past five years. He dismissed opposition concerns of election fraud as ”nonsense”.