More than 11 000 people in six countries were killed on Sunday when the most powerful earthquake in 40 years triggered huge tidal waves that hit coastlines across Asia. The death toll is almost certain to rise further as the full extent of the devastation emerges. Tourists, fishermen, hotels, homes and cars were swept away by walls of water unleashed by the 8,9-magnitude earthquake, centred off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Authorities in Kenya, Mauritius, Reunion, Seychelles and Somalia on Sunday asked people to evacuate areas on their Indian Ocean shores, after huge waves killed thousands in south Asia. The Seychelles was the worst hit, with nine people reported missing. At least nine people were killed when a tidal wave hit north-eastern Somalia.

More than 11 000 people were killed and thousands more are missing after a powerful earthquake on Sunday triggered giant tidal waves that slammed into coasts across southern Asia, swallowing villages and wreaking death and devastation on seaside resorts. The quake is the fifth largest recorded to date.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Africa&ao=177165">Tidal waves hit Africa</a>

It has been described as the worst movie ever made, but a Swiss parody of the Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy has been playing to packed cinemas across the country since it opened 10 days ago — and is set to become Switzerland’s biggest box-office hit of the year. The Ring Thing shamelessly draws its inspiration from Monty Python.

The jeep swerved when an egg hit its passenger window. A man dressed in black leant into the driver’s window and screamed: ‘Go home!’. Terrified, the driver sped on, into a road strewn with nails. It was the moment that opposition supporters, driving round Ukraine as part of a ‘Friendship Tour’, hoped would never happen.

Space engineers sent Europe’s Huygens probe sweeping towards Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, on Saturday. Officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said they had received a signal confirming that the barbecue-sized robot craft had separated from its mother ship, the United States-built spaceship Cassini.

The death toll from an earthquake off Indonesia on Sunday and tsunamis that it unleashed reached 7 428, with officials reporting deaths in seven countries in southern and southeastern Asia. Sri Lanka was hard hit with 3 225 people confirmed dead, 1 600 injured and many more missing, the military and Tamil Tiger rebels said.