Nearly 300 people living in remote mountain villages in Taiwan were airlifted to safety on Saturday morning as continued bad weather threatened a fresh wave of mudslides in the district most affected by Typhoon Aere. Hundreds of rescuers continued to search for survivors and evacuate residents from Wufeng Township in the northern Hsinchu county.
An -million joint Japanese-United States project to research cosmic rays was slated for groundbreaking on Saturday in the desert state of Utah. The Japanese government is contributing -million to the project, which involves building three hilltop ”fluorescence” detectors and another 576 smaller detectors scattered over a 1 000 square kilometre area.
Fingerprint evidence links the killing of the Zambian president’s brother with the attempted murder of a Hong Kong tour guide, the Pretoria Regional Court heard on Friday. Claurina Chaka’s fingerprints were found in Chung Man Hei Ward’s hotel room, police fingerprint expert Donnie Mokeri testified.
The leader of the United States Episcopal Church told Ugandan Anglican bishops on Friday to keep out of its affairs after three Los Angeles parishes decided to ally themselves with an African diocese in the row over homosexual clergy. The parishes, in Newport Beach, Long Beach and North Hollywood, are the first to seek oversight from a bishop overseas.
Henry Kissinger gave Argentina’s military junta the green light to suppress political opposition at the start of the ”dirty war” in 1976, telling the country’s foreign minister: ”If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly,” according to newly-declassified documents published on Friday.
Two of the 70 suspected mercenaries arrested in Zimbabwe on suspicion of plotting a coup in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea were released on Friday after they were acquitted of all charges. Prosecutors claimed Harry Carlse and Lourens Horn, both South Africans, were hired to inspect a consignment of weapons intended to be used in the alleged plot. But Magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe said the state failed to prove its case against the men.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=121194">Mark Thatcher: The money trail</a>
Fifa president Joseph Blatter has criticised the Olympic Games as being too big and too confusing and suggested some of the indoor sports could be transferred to the winter Games. In an interview with German radio, Blatter said he was also disappointed at the lack of atmosphere and poor spectator levels at the Olympic football tournament.
Special report: Olympics 2004
The Blue Bulls pulled off a magnificent victory to surge into a seven point lead at the top of the Currie Cup table, beating the Sharks 41-27 with an inspiring performance by Springbok scrumhalf Fourie du Preez. Du Preez scored one of his sides’ five tries and had a hand in at least two others as the Bulls made their intentions of winning a third consecutive title under coach Heyneke Meyer clear.
A billboard outside the Olympic Stadium declares: ”Impossible is Nothing”. Mbulaeni Mulaudzi proved that when he stunned the world’s best 800-metre runners with an incredible silver medal at the Olympic Games in Athens on Saturday night. Hestrie Cloete battled out an intense high jump final to also end with silver.
Special Report: Olympics 2004
Kenya’s tourism and wildlife minister Emmanuel Karisa Maitha has died of a heart attack during a press interview in Germany, reports said on Friday. After Maitha collapsed during an interview with Deustche Welle in Frankfurt on Thursday, he was taken to hospital, but doctors failed to resuscitate him, wrote the East African Standard newspaper.