An Italian envoy will fly to Libya on Friday to discuss radical plans to set up ”reception centres” for would-be immigrants, with officials from both countries estimating that up to two million people have already massed on the north African coast in readiness for an opportunity to travel by boat to Europe.
The South Korean government confirmed on Wednesday that it is to create a new capital in what will be one of Asia’s biggest construction projects to date. Under the -billion scheme, a site in the sleepy region of Gongju-Yongi 160km south of Seoul will replace it as the seat of Parliament and government by 2020.
While some disgruntled customers would probably like to see South African telecommunications giant Telkom burn in hell, the parastatal this week took exception to the popular website Hellkom and threatened the creator with a R5-million lawsuit for copyright infringement.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=120223">Telkom sues website owner for R5m</a>
More than 40 South African women have discovered that they had been married without their knowledge, the Home Affairs Department said on Thursday. They were among about 2 000 women checking their marital status on the department’s records, as part of a campaign to curb the problem of women being unknowingly married to foreigners.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang will meet HIV/Aids experts in Johannesburg on Thursday to discuss reports of resistance to the drug nevirapine, her spokesperson said. The meeting follows a warning from the Medicines Control Council last month of signs of resistance to nevirapine as a monotheraphy.
Melbourne is under threat from an invader straight out of a horror film: a giant column of ants 96km across. The supercolony of Argentine ants — a species that arrived in the country from South America in the 1930s — has swamped the city. The insects do not harm humans but they disrupt the ecosystem and have been known to overwhelm and kill hatchlings in chicken farms.
Boris Spassky on Wednesday called on the United States to show mercy to his former chess rival Bobby Fischer, and challenged the authorities to arrest him, too. Fischer, who became world chess champion at the age of 29, was detained at Tokyo’s Narita airport last month while trying to leave Japan using an invalid passport.
Chaos erupted in Umtata on Wednesday when police used teargas and rubber bullets to forcibly evict students from the Eastern Cape Technikon. Police took action after an hour-long standoff with a group of students who stood at the main entrance of the institution refusing to leave the premises.
Three European countries scrambled fighters to intercept a Spanish airliner that flew for hundreds of kilometres without responding to control tower messages, raising the fear that it had been hijacked, airline sources confirmed on Wednesday. The scare on May 1 ended when the chief cabin attendant in the airliner looked out of a window and saw two French fighters.
In a dirty alley on the outskirts of the old city of Najaf on Wednesday stood a crowd of militia fighters — the newest volunteer among them a bright young biology student called Ali. He arrived seven days ago, bringing his Kalashnikov and a willingness to fight for the radical Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Around his head he wore a green, silk bandanna — an emblem of martyrdom.
56 killed, 110 wounded in US bombing