The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency said on Monday he regrets that Iran began conversion activities before the agency’s surveillance system could be tested on site. Iran on Monday resumed uranium conversion at its nuclear facility in Isfahan.
Aid workers say the food crisis in Mali is raging largely unnoticed by a world preoccupied with hunger in next-door Niger. There are fears of a replay of the drama in Niger, where the world ignored repeated warnings and only rushed in when images of starving children hit the airwaves.
Cape Town mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo has fired her media adviser Blackman Ngoro over his controversial website remarks about coloureds. Mfeketo made the announcement on Monday after receiving the report of an internal council inquiry, saying the affair has ”really created racial disharmony” in the city.
A meeting between striking municipal workers’ unions and the South African Local Government Association continued on Monday afternoon with no new developments, a union spokesperson said. In KwaZulu-Natal, police arrested 43 striking municipal employees on Monday, as striking Samwu members took to the streets.
The chase to sign England striker Michael Owen is hotting up after Real Madrid revealed that both Manchester United and Newcastle United have joined the list of clubs expressing an interest. However, Manchester United have denied they are set to sign the former Liverpool star who appears on his way out of Real after just one season.
Wearing grey gloves, Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu spent time on Monday morning laying bricks for 15 houses as part of Women’s Build 2005. ”I’m happy and proud of the beneficiaries and the women volunteers who have given up time to come and help build these houses,” Sisulu said at the official opening of the project in Soweto.
Thousands of people were left suffocating on Monday as a massive sandstorm brought life in the war-torn Iraqi capital to a virtual standstill. Nearly 1 000 cases of suffocation were reported at the city’s Yarmuk hospital, which saw one 60-year-old woman die. The capital’s main airport was also shut.
The Sudanese president has ordered an investigation into deadly riots that killed more than 130 people across Sudan in the days following the death of first Vice President John Garang in a helicopter crash, state media reported on Monday. The investigation team is to report back to the president within two weeks.
A new primary school built to replace that destroyed in the Beslan school hostage massacre last year has been robbed, with thieves stealing computers, printers and televisions worth around €5 000 ( 200), officials said on Monday.
Books about boy wizard Harry Potter have become favorite reading material among Islamic terror suspects at the United States detention centre at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, <i>The Washington Times</i> reported on Monday. "We’ve got a few who are kind of hooked on it," said a librarian working at the centre.