Twenty-seven people are still missing after their ship sunk off the coast of Port Alfred, the National Sea Rescue Institute said on Thursday. ”The Fortune Express [a bulk carrier] has launched a lifeboat and her crew are continuing to search for survivors,” said search and rescue coordinator Mark Hellenberg.
Early morning, somehow, does not seem to be Bob Dylan’s natural time of day. Nevertheless, the legendary singer-songwriter made his debut as a radio DJ on Wednesday at 10am on America’s east coast, which is 7am on the west coast — although anyone expecting a peppy, caffeinated rundown of the day’s news, perhaps with some traffic updates, would have been disappointed.
Police have worked through the night in the search for two Boeremag treason trial accused who escaped from the Pretoria High Court on Wednesday, police said on Thursday. Herman van Rooyen (33) and Rudi Gouws (28) went missing during the lunch hour recess. One of them had allegedly bankrolled the organisation.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair could be forced into naming the day he will step aside if Thursday’s key local elections go any worse than predicted for his scandal-hit Labour Party. Experts predict that after nine years in power, Blair’s centre-left party is set for a pounding at the polls.
Zimbabwean journalists on Wednesday marched from a local hotel in Harare to where the banned <i>Daily News</i> and <i>The Tribune</i> were formerly housed to mark World Press Freedom Day. Zimbabwe’s theme for World Press Freedom Day this year was <i>No to Statutory Regulation, Yes to Self-Regulation</i>.
As hideouts go, the Shawal Valley in northern Pakistan is a militant’s dream. Lonely goat trails wind through a rocky 40km corridor that nudges the Afghan border. Its fiercely conservative tribesmen and forbidding high-walled compounds have sheltered Taliban fighters and probably al-Qaeda fugitives.
The United Nations Security Council met behind closed doors to discuss a draft resolution on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme on Wednesday as Tehran announced it had successfully enriched uranium to a new level. Britain and France, backed by the United States, put forward a draft resolution that would make it mandatory for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment programme
A massive earthquake with a magnitude of 7,8 rocked the island nation of Tonga on Thursday, triggering a panic evacuation in a New Zealand town after tsunami warnings were briefly issued for the South Pacific. Although the warnings were withdrawn within two hours, hundreds of people in the New Zealand coastal town of Gisborne, more than 2 200km from the quake’s epicentre, fled their homes.
Print Media South Africa (PMSA) has thrown a lifeline to the cash-strapped South African Advertising Research Foundation (SAARF), agreeing to fund a R2.5 million shortfall.
In our letters pages this week, we record a rather different reaction to Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s complaint about South Africa’s white community — different, that is, from the standard howls of outrage and furious protestations that whites are "good citizens".