The most powerful typhoon to hit eastern Japan in a decade was bearing down on Tokyo and neighbouring regions on Saturday, sparking transport chaos amid warnings of torrential rain, strong winds and landslides. Typhoon Ma-on was due to slam into central or eastern Japan late on Saturday, the Meteorological Agency warned.
The leader of Nigeria’s National Labour Congress said on Friday a renewable nationwide general strike against rising fuel prices will start on Monday and last four days, after talks with authorities collapsed. The news of further unrest in Nigeria could push world oil prices still higher still next week.
Insurgents blew up the Iraqi Red Crescent Society building in the Iraqi city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, on Friday, the United States military said in a statement. There were no reports of injuries. A US marine patrol saw four insurgents filming the explosion at 4.30pm (1pm GMT), the statement said.
By embarking on an unprecedented tour of the troubled east of his country next week, President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) hopes to show that the former Zaire is reunited after five years of war. ”It’s risky. It will be brave of him if he goes,” a regional analyst said in Kinshasa.
The run-up to the Schabir Shaik corruption trial starting in Durban on Monday has seen the media sharply focusing on the main players in the upcoming drama — even the judge. On Friday, it emerged that Squires also served as a politician and tough justice minister in the then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the 1970s under Ian Smith.
South African National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi was elected on Friday as the new president of Interpol during the final of the 73rd Interpol General Assembly in Cancun, Mexico, a spokesperson said. Selebi, who was Interpol vice-president for Africa, was elected by a vote of 89 to 31 over Mexican nominee Genaro Garcia Luna.
The former senior public prosecutor of the Pietermaritzburg Magistrate’s Court was convicted of fraud and corruption and sentenced in the Durban Regional Court on Friday. Stanley Ngubane was paid R70 000 in order for a murder accused to be detained at local police cells, instead of in prison.
The councillor responsible for Rome’s traffic, Mario di Carlo, has said he intends making owners of sports utility vehicles (SUVs) pay â,¬1 000 each year — more than triple the normal rate for a permit to enter the historic centre. His announcement is the latest move in a growing, Europe-wide backlash against four-wheel drives.
Using the bathroom in an upmarket New York restaurant does not come cheap and diners often find themselves not so much spending a penny as spending a dollar — or more. But any resentment at the fees charged by acquisitive bathroom attendants was tempered this week.
United States President George Bush on Friday became the first president since Herbert Hoover in the Depression to preside over a loss of jobs when the last set of employment figures published before next month’s election showed only a modest improvement in September.