The natural flow of the Yangtze river was brought to a halt yesterday as engineers at the Three Gorges dam, under construction in central China, closed a crucial section.
Bruce Dickinson, singer for chart-topping heavy metal veterans Iron Maiden, is hitting new heights in his second career as a commercial airline pilot.
Millions of children’s lives are being lost or blighted because pledges to take action to curb the spread of malaria have not been kept, either by heads of state in poor countries or by wealthy donor states,
a leading economist has claimed.
Slobodan Milosevic underwent medical tests yesterday after his genocide trial was suspended for the second time this month, fuelling concern that his health may not allow proceedings to continue.
The Bush administration has intensified its campaign to open up the last of America’s nature areas to commercial exploitation, unveiling a plan to allow logging in forests under the federal government’s protection.
The remains of the black South African soldiers who perished 85 years ago with the sunken SS Mendi war ship in France during the First World War will soon be brought home.
As Italy yesterday digested the shock of the conviction for murder of its most representative post-war politician, one of the least perturbed Italians appeared to be the man himself, Giulio Andreotti, who retained his legendary sang froid and joked that he might pen a thriller to fill in the missing clues.
The first team of UN inspectors landed in Baghdad yesterday to resume their search for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons after a four-year interruption.
Iraqi minders have promised journalists in English that they can go wherever they want, even the enormous presidential palace. But, in Arabic, the minders said to one another that there was no way they were taking journalists anywhere within sight of the palace.
More than 90 years after the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic, the identity of one of the victims has finally been discovered by means of DNA matching.
France and Spain prepared for a repeat of the Prestige tanker disaster yesterday after Estonia resisted international pressure to prevent another suspect ship leaving Tallinn this weekend on its way through the Baltic sea and the English Channel.
Most people take pains to avoid nettles. But while most of England was celebrating the World Cup win over Denmark, Simon Sleigh was claiming the title of world champion nettle-eater.
Two Ghanaian boys aged 12 and 14 have been found dead in the undercarriage well of an aeroplane at Heathrow airport, apparently having tried to smuggle their way into Britain.
The South African government has refused to support a lawsuit against foreign multinationals and banks which allegedly propped up apartheid because it fears deterring investors.
African miner Ashanti Goldfields, near to finalising a life-saving debt overhaul, revealed on Tuesday that platinum miner and major shareholder Lonmin Plc had suggested an 11th-hour alternative refinancing plan.
Troubled internet giant America Online (AOL) is set to cut hundreds of jobs in the US as part of a cost cutting drive to offset a sharp fall in advertising revenue.
Earth’s magnetic field — the force that protects us from deadly radiation bursts from outer space — is weakening dramatically.
Vladimir Putin warned the US last night not to go it alone against Iraq, sounding a note of caution after an otherwise warm welcome to President Bush in Russia.
”The latest rumour is that it’s going to weigh 60 kilograms,” one security council diplomat said yesterday, a little apprehensively, as UN officials waited in New York for the arrival of the Iraq’s written declaration on weapons of mass destruction.
British house prices rose strongly in September as the market continued to boom, Britain’s biggest mortgage lender said on Friday.
British newspapers said on Tuesday that President Robert Mugabe had subjected Prime Minister Tony Blair to a humiliating ambush after ”hijacking” the UN Earth Summit in Johannesburg to blame Britain for Zimbabwe’s crisis.
Australia’s bitter debate on euthanasia has been reignited following the suicide of a healthy 79-year-old former academic who decided that she had enjoyed ”a happy life, but enough of it”.
More than a dozen bidders have expressed interest in buying the assets of bankrupt online music-swapping site Napster, an investment banker handling the bidding process said this week.
A film to be shown on German television tomorrow marks the end of a taboo that has held sway for more than half a century. The film deals with the Third Reich. And it is a comedy.
BRITAIN’S governing Labour Party furiously rejected fresh sleaze charges on Sunday after accepting a large donation from a publishing magnate negotiating to buy a leading newspaper group.
Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the two biggest names in fine art auctions, each face being fined at least 10-million euros by the European Commission for fixing their fees during the 1990s, the Financial Times reported on Friday.
State-owned South African power utility Eskom has launched and priced its planned three-year bond on Friday, defying European national holidays and emerging bond market volatility that might have derailed it.
Britain has been involved in secret talks with the United States over the development of so-called non-lethal weapons, including lasers that blind the enemy and microwave systems that cook the skin of human targets.
Black-clad Czech riot police patrolled the streets of Prague and US warplanes roared overhead last night as Nato leaders prepared for an historic summit dominated by the crisis over Iraq.
We arrive at Tham Krabok, Thailand’s monastic answer to the Betty Ford clinic; the door of our minibus is slammed back to reveal a 6ft 2in tall Buddhist monk, a Vietnam vet. ”OK,” he rasps. ”Who’s fucked up?”
Muslims the world over are ”boiling with rage” at Western double standards over Iraq, Israel and Palestine, says a prominent London-based Arab commentator, who has met Osama bin Laden.
Human rights watchdog Amnesty International said on Friday it was concerned that an unmarried Nigerian mother sentenced to be stoned still faced the death penalty, despite international anger at the case.