No image available
/ 21 November 2004
At least eight miners were confirmed dead and rescue teams were battling to reach a further 78 workers trapped underground after a fire at five iron-ore mines in northern China, officials and media said on Sunday. By early Sunday, 20 miners had been rescued from the blaze at the mines in Baita township in Hebei province.
No image available
/ 21 November 2004
Philippine rescuers searched for 40 people missing on Sunday after Tropical Storm Muifa cut through the country, sinking boats, causing landslides and blackouts and killing at least five, officials said. Twenty-five small fishing boats and their crew remained missing around Mindoro island, south of Manila, the Office of Civil Defence said.
No image available
/ 21 November 2004
A passenger plane carrying 53 people crashed on Sunday in a lake in northern China immediately after takeoff, killing all aboard, the government said. The plane crashed into a frozen lake in Nanhai Park ”only about a dozen seconds” after it took off. Police and firefighters were breaking the ice on the lake to search for victims.
78 Chinese miners trapped after fire
No image available
/ 21 November 2004
President Thabo Mbeki hopes to travel to Côte d’Ivoire ”as quickly as possible” to meet all parties to the ongoing conflict in that country and discuss a solution. ”I want to go back very, very quickly,” Mbeki told reporters in Pretoria at the start of discussions with the leader of the rebel-held north.
No image available
/ 21 November 2004
Two more bodies were discovered in a drain pipe on the Samrand road in Centurion on Saturday morning, bringing the total number of bodies found in the area to four, Pretoria police said. Spokesperson Captain Piletji Sebola said a team of detectives made the discovery when it returned to the scene to search for possible clues.
No image available
/ 21 November 2004
When oil prices shot up above a barrel earlier this year, it was the latest signal that, finally, China is living up to its potential as one of the world’s great economic powers: when Beijing and Shanghai put their foot on the gas, the effects ripple throughout the global economy. But taking a bigger part in the world economy has its price.
No image available
/ 21 November 2004
The British government investigated the possibility that British firms were involved in a plot to overthrow the president of Equatorial Guinea several weeks before last March’s attempted coup. British officials in the region took the coup threat so seriously that they rewrote contingency plans to evacuate British nationals from the Central African state.
Phone links Thatcher to alleged plot
No image available
/ 21 November 2004
For years, psychological disorders were ignored or treated as the product of decadent foreign societies, but a flood of studies has revealed that China has some of the biggest mental health problems in the world, particularly among rural women and urban schoolchildren.
No image available
/ 21 November 2004
The International Red Cross has made an unprecedented appeal for an end to human-rights abuses in Iraq, saying it is ”deeply concerned” at the impact of the fighting in the country and at apparent failures by all sides in the conflict to respect humanitarian laws. Saturday saw another day of violence in Fallujah and Baghdad.
No image available
/ 21 November 2004
Pentagon hawks have begun discussing military action against Iran to neutralise its nuclear weapons threat, including possible strikes on leadership, political and security targets. Details of the emerging Pentagon thinking have come as US officials have spent the past week turning up the pressure on Iran.
Suspicion over Iran’s nuclear aims