At least 30 rebels died in an aerial bombardment of their camps in northwestern Colombia, authorities said on Wednesday. Colombian Air Force combat aircraft bombed three rural areas along a border between the provinces of Antioquia and Choco, west of Medellin, where rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) were camped.
Nasa said on Wednesday that engineers have launched an elaborate review into why pieces of foam insulation fell off the space shuttle Discovery‘s fuel tank, hoping to clear the way for more manned space flights.
The United Nations said on Wednesday that 17 bodies had been recovered from the site of the late Sudanese southern rebel John Garang’s helicopter crash — three more than originally reported. ”The last figure that I saw in our report was 17,” said Radhia Achouri, a spokesperson for UN special envoy for Sudan Jan Pronk.
A postcard sent from a prisoner of war (POW) camp in Germany in 1942 has been delivered to its address in Serbia after more than 63 years, local media reported on Wednesday. Michael Cronenberg, a German antiques dealer bought a postcard, written by prisoner of war Vojislav Dzeletovic on June 26, 1942 from a camp in eastern Germany to his wife Bosiljka, at a flea market in Germany.
Zimbabwean authorities are blocking aid to about 2Â 300 people resettled on a farm outside Harare following a government demolitions campaign, rights and church groups said on Wednesday. ”The people are living in the open with little food, no shelter. Access to these people has not been easy,” said Alouis Chaumba, director for the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace.
South Africa needs to achieve "significantly higher rates" of economic growth if it is to succeed in meeting the needs of the people, President Thabo Mbeki has told trade unionists. He said one of the issues being studied by his government was import parity pricing as it affected the chemical industry.
A settlement with unions involved in the nationwide gold miners’ strike was very close, the Chamber of Mines said on Thursday evening. Spokesperson Frans Baker said the chamber had offered an increase of between six and seven percent — and seven percent for lower paid workers — on behalf of all four major mining houses.
It is not often that computer users cheer a victory for Microsoft, the software firm whose uncompromising success has made founder Bill Gates the world’s richest man. But many will have shared his satisfaction on Wednesday after the computer giant claimed a victory when a man dubbed the ”Spam King” agreed to pay the company -million.
A vast expanse of western Siberia is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn on Thursday. Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11Â 000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.
President Thabo Mbeki and his government are desperately trying to limit public embarrassment over the widely publicised political conditions they have reportedly attached to an emergency bail-out for President Robert Mugabe. They should have followed the diplomatic principle enunciated by classical Greek dramatist Euripides.