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/ 18 October 2004
Masked men torched a Roman Catholic church in Zanzibar over the weekend, the third such attack in a week in the predominantly Muslim Indian Ocean archipelago, a church leader said on Monday. Suspicions fell on Islamic extremists, highlighting rising Islamic militancy and growing political tensions as Zanzibar prepares elections.
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/ 18 October 2004
A powerful typhoon headed toward the southern Japanese island of Okinawa on Monday, disrupting ferry service and pelting the region with heavy rain. Typhoon Tokage, the Japanese word for lizard, will be the record 10th typhoon to strike Japan this year if it makes landfall, the Meteorological Agency said.
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/ 18 October 2004
He put a mask on his face, pulled out a gun and demanded money. But when the bank clerk laughed in his face, the would-be robber was so humiliated he just ran away. The 31-year-old clerk, identified only as Martina S, ”laughed aloud” at the threat from the bandit because she knew she was protected by bulletproof glass.
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/ 18 October 2004
A driverless diesel locomotive thundered nearly 200km through southern Italy at 80kph on Friday before line staff managed to derail it at a disused station. The driver had set the engine in motion, leaned out to see if the line ahead was clear, then slipped and fell from his cabin.
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/ 18 October 2004
Iran’s hard-line Basij militia has written to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to ask if the Islamic republic can send observers to the United States presidential election in November, a government newspaper said on Monday. ”We want to ridicule the so-called democratic slogans of the American leaders,” a Basij official said.
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/ 18 October 2004
Computer viruses and so-called spam e-mail may cause the internet to collapse in the near future, a Finnish researcher warned on Monday. Based on current trends, the internet will collapse in 2006, Hannu H Kari, professor at the Helsinki University of Technology, told the Finnish news agency STT.
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/ 18 October 2004
Fraud and corruption accused Schabir Shaik’s former assistant Bianca Singh told the Durban High Court on Monday she had to sign a confidentiality clause on leaving his employ because she knew too much about his relationship with Deputy President Jacob Zuma.
Shaik’s assistant spills the beans
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/ 18 October 2004
Gold miner Gold Fields on Monday said it has rejected a takeover bid by world number-six gold miner Harmony to create the world’s leading gold mining group, saying it is not in its interests. "Harmony’s true agenda has not been revealed," Gold Fields official Andrew Davidson said.
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/ 18 October 2004
More than 900 people were arrested in the Johannesburg area this weekend — almost half of them for serious crimes, police said on Monday. Police spokesperson Inspector Amanda Roestoff said eight murder suspects, four suspected rapists, and five suspected car-hijackers were arrested during police operations.
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/ 18 October 2004
The Boeremag treason trial may be delayed yet again — this time because of a planned urgent application to stop some of the accused being moved from individual to communal cells. The Boeremag accused — who are being held at Pretoria local prison — have complained bitterly about plans to move them from their present single cells into communal cells.