Twenty-one awaiting-trial prisoners escaped from police cells in the North West province on Sunday night. Police spokesperson Captain Elsabe Augoustides said on Monday that the prisoners had overpowered police officers at Lehurutshe, between Zeerust and Groot Marico, who had inspected the police cells at about 6pm.
Four people were rescued after their yacht capsized off Millers Point near Simons Town, the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) said on Sunday. Spokesperson Craig Lambinon said the NSRI Simons Town and the Vodacom Netcare 911 Surf Rescue helicopter were alerted to a distress call on Saturday afternoon at around 4.40pm.
Rescue ships collected scores of bloated corpses on Monday from seas close to where an Indonesian ferry sank in the Java Sea, but search teams also spotted survivors on life rafts and dropped food and water to them, officials said. Weeping relatives camped out at ports and a local hospital, desperate for news of the roughly 400 people still missing from the ferry.
As United States President George Bush hacked down brushwood and rode his bike at his Crawford ranch this weekend, he gave the impression of a US president little preoccupied by two Iraq milestones that complicate his deliberations on a change of strategy.
Robert Mugabe’s government has moved to close Zimbabwe’s remaining independent press by stripping newspaper owner Trevor Ncube, also the publisher of the Mail & Guardian in South Africa, of his citizenship. The action against the publisher comes as Mugabe pushes for an extension to his term of office.
Rescuers found the smoldering wreckage of an Indonesian jetliner that crashed into mountains during a storm, and officials said 90 people were killed and that 12 survived the country’s second major transportation disaster in days. The Boeing 737-400 sent out two distress signals half way through its two-hour flight on Monday from the main island of Java to Sulawesi.
Camera footage of the final minutes of Saddam Hussein released on Sunday shows him being taunted by Shia hangmen and witnesses, a scene that risks increasing sectarian tension in Iraq. As he stood at the gallows, he was tormented by the hooded executioners or witnesses shouting at him to "Go to hell".
Deadly bombings cut short New Year celebrations in Bangkok and an ETA bombing prompted Madrid to cancel its festivities, while bad weather hampered revellers from New Zealand to Scotland. But the capitals of Bulgaria and Romania saw their biggest parties since the fall of Communism 17 years ago as tens of thousands sang, danced and drank their way into 2007 and the European Union.
Researchers from some 60 countries will try to better understand the Earth’s poles in 2007 and the effect of climate change as part of the first "International Polar Year" since the 1950s. The scientific effort, unlike previous undertakings, will be marked by the spectre of global warming and transformed by collaboration with Inuits living in the Arctic.
No image available
/ 31 December 2006
South Africans must use the resources and experience accumulated in 2006 to ensure a better life for every South African in 2007, President Thabo Mbeki said in his new year message on Sunday. ”We must be able to show practically that we have succeeded to realise the hopes of even more of our citizens than we have in 2006.”