Seventy-one Ugandan soldiers were killed and another 41 injured, many seriously, when their huge truck crashed into a concrete barrier at the side of a mountain road, a spokesperson said on Monday. ”It was a trailer and the soldiers were changing location from eastern Uganda. Apparently no one escaped unhurt,” army spokesperson Major Felix Kulayigye said.
China’s Premier Wen Jiabao on Monday expressed ”grave concern” over reports that Chinese army hackers had penetrated German government computers systems and he vowed to crack down on such activity. ”We in the government took [the reports] as a matter of grave concern,” Wen said after meeting visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
South Africa’s rand firmed to a two-week high on Monday and bonds also strengthened as investors slowly returned to high-risk assets. At 06h45 GMT, the rand stood at 7,16 versus the dollar after firming to 7,1498 earlier — its strongest level since August 13, according to Reuters data.
Rock stars from the 1960s and 1970s have been hitting Germany’s lucrative concert circuit but many of the grandpa-generation acts have disappointed fans and provoked withering reviews in Europe’s biggest music market. The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Genesis, the Police and Black Sabbath are among the acts appearing this summer in arenas between the Black Forest and the Baltic.
Polluters along two of China’s main rivers have defied a decade-old clean-up effort, leaving much of the water unfit to touch, let alone drink, and a risk to a sixth of the population, state media said on Monday. Half the check points along the Huai River and its tributaries in central and eastern China showed pollution of ”grade five” or worse — the top of the dial in key toxins.
Actor Erik Holm, best known for his role in the soapie 7de Laan, was still in the intensive-care unit at a Pretoria hospital days after he broke his neck when he dived into a man-made lake in Secunda, it was reported on Monday. Holm (25) dived into the murky water at Secunda’s waterfront last Friday to retrieve a ball that he and a group of small children were playing with.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s court record and hospital file relating to her years in exile in Botswana have disappeared — either lost or missing, the Star reported on Monday. However, the fact that Tshabalala-Msimang’s court file relating to her 1976 theft conviction cannot be found has caused a stir.
I wake up, and for a moment everything seems normal — I’m in a fairly nice hotel room, tucked up in a double bed. To my right there’s a TV and DVD combo hovering above a wooden desk, next to which a door leads to the toilet. Then the sheep start bleating. Because I’m not in a hotel at all, I’m in a glass box in the middle of a field in Oxfordshire, England.
The world’s largest casino-resort, a gaudy mix of baccarat, shops and Venetian canals, opened this week, aiming to accelerate Macau’s heady transformation from gambling haven to Asia’s top entertainment draw. The $2,4-billion Venetian Macao resort, built on a spit of reclaimed land called the Cotai Strip, seeks to capitalise on the casino boom by getting the millions of visitors to stay for more than just a turn at the tables.
In May this year I went to St Helena to participate in its walking festival. St Helena is that tiny island in the middle of the vast South Atlantic which, even today, can be reached only by the last of the mailboats from Cape Town. Yet, who should be the first islander I strolled into, but King Dinuzulu’s granddaughter? There she was, striding along, writes Stephen Gray.