With the world’s demand for oil and gas surging, multinational energy giants have embarked on a platform-building spree off the southern coast of Nigeria with an eye to doubling exports from the unruly West African giant. Nigeria’s expansion will be a key factor in meeting the challenge of rising prices and rising consumption.
International lenders have downgraded Sri Lanka’s economic growth forecasts for this year after tsunamis devastated its coastline, but the island is banking on a flood of foreign aid to keep its head above the water. ”The tsunami has certainly given the country a new lease of life,” said Alastair Corera, country head of Fitch Ratings.
Former president Nelson Mandela’s son-in-law is wanted by United States authorities for the alleged rape of a student in 1993, the Sunday Times reported in its early edition on Saturday. The Connecticut state attorney’s office told the Sunday Times a warrant for Dr Isaac Amuah’s arrest was issued in January 1994.
More frozen bodies were recovered from an area of the Chilean Andes on Saturday, bringing to 21 the number of confirmed dead after 45 young conscripts were lost in a blizzard in the Chilean army’s worst peacetime disaster. President Ricardo Lagos has announced three days of national mourning.
Singer Kylie Minogue was on Sunday recovering at a hospital in her hometown of Melbourne following a successful operation to treat breast cancer. The star was said to be feeling fine and is expected to make a complete recovery following a lumpectomy, during which the small growth was removed.
The husband of a Colombian politician who has been held hostage by rebels for more than three years has undertaken a lone mission to send her a message of love — including dropping 7 000 photographs of her two children from a small plane over the Andes.
The razor-toothed Tyrannosaurus rex, jaws agape, looms ominously over the gentle thescelosaurus, looking for plants to eat. To one side, peering through the bushes, are Adam and Eve. Admiring the museum diorama are old and young visitors, listening on headphones to a stentorian voice describing the primeval scene.
A second prosecution witness on Saturday denied that Zimbabwe’s former finance minister Chris Kuruneri smuggled out funds to buy a mansion in South Africa and flouted the country’s tough foreign-exchange laws. Kuruneri faces seven counts of breaching Zimbabwe’s exchange-control laws.
At least 19 people were injured, six seriously, when a cloud of cooking gas ignited at a beer festival on Saturday at Johannesburg’s German School, police said. German and Swiss nationals were among the injured. Youths were believed to have unsafely opened a gas canister at a concession stand selling German-style grilled sausages.
Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai was on Saturday night on his way to the United States, promising to confront President George Bush over the growing scandal about American abuse of Afghan prisoners. Karzai’s visit comes at a time of crisis in US-Muslim relations after the release of pictures of Saddam Hussein in detention and widespread abuse allegations against US troops.