Laurance Rockefeller, a conservationist, philanthropist and leading figure in the field of venture capital, died in his sleep on Sunday morning. He was 94. The cause of death was pulmonary fibrosis, his spokesperson said in a statement. Rockefeller was number 377 on this year’s Forbes magazine list of 587 billionaires, with ,5-billion.
The air over the Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge in the United States this time of year is usually filled with the grunts and squawks of thousands of white pelicans and their chicks. The giant birds have made the refuge their home for at least 100 years. Now their nesting grounds are quiet. The pelicans are gone — and no one knows why.
The United States warned its citizens on Friday of the risk of travel to crisis-ridden Zimbabwe. ”Zimbabwe continues to be in the midst of political, economic and humanitarian crises with serious implications for the security situation in the country,” the US State Department said in a travel warning.
Marlon Brando, whose brooding, tongue-tied characters in The Wild One, On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire uttered some of the most famous lines in movie history, has died at the age of 80. The two-time Oscar winner died in a Los Angeles hospital late on Thursday, media reported on Friday.
The judge in the Michael Jackson child molestation case sealed one of the most critical defence motions in the case without comment on Friday, continuing a pattern of secrecy he has imposed throughout the proceedings. An attorney representing media organisations promised to oppose the seal.
An employee of ConAgra Foods Inc killed four people in the cafeteria of the plant on Friday, news reports said. The man carried two handguns into the plant and strode into the cafeteria, where he opened fire, The New York Times reported on its website. The man then killed himself.
Microsoft said on Thursday it is revamping its internet search operation and preparing to launch its own search engine later this year to compete directly with Google and Yahoo. The immediate change will be a ”cleaner look” for its MSN Search page that separates paid and unpaid search results and provides direct links to Microsoft’s encyclopedia service.
Archaeologists have led reporters into a remote canyon to reveal an almost perfectly preserved picture of ancient life: stone pit houses, granaries and a bounty of artefacts kept secret for more than a half-century. Hundreds of sites on a private ranch offer some of the best evidence of the little-understood Fremont hunter-gatherers.
Massachusetts consumers could receive as much as -million worth of computer products, while North Dakota consumers could get as much as -million in separate, proposed settlements of class-action lawsuits accusing Microsoft of violating each state’s antitrust laws.
The United States Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that a law meant to punish pornographers who peddle dirty pictures to web-surfing kids is probably an unconstitutional muzzle on free speech. The high court divided five to four over a law passed in 1998 and now backed by the administration of President George Bush.
The executive in charge of circulation for the <i>Chicago Sun-Times</i> has resigned, two weeks after the paper’s parent company announced it had inflated its circulation figures for several years. Another Chicago-based newspaper company also announced two weeks ago that it overstated circulation numbers.
Atlanta Bread executive Basil Couvaras plans to return to South Africa to face fraud charges, a spokesperson said. ”Basil is voluntarily going back to South Africa. We are working on the details of when that will occur,” said Jane Langley, spokesperson for Couvaras and his brother, Jerry, who was arrested by South African officials in March.
A Missouri maker of software that has enabled users to copy DVDs and computer games soon could fold under the mounting weight of lawsuits by deep-pocketed movie studios and others, the company’s chief said. Robert Moore said on Wednesday that he’ll decide within weeks whether his 321 Studios would seek federal bankruptcy protection.
The United States House of Representatives voted to extend a trade pact that offers duty-free treatment on some goods and other trade benefits to the poorer countries of sub-Saharan Africa. The legislation, approved by voice vote on Monday, would prolong the life of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA, by seven years, to 2015.
South African President Thabo Mbeki said United States assistance to Africa is too focused on individual countries and should be directed in large measure toward the continent as a whole. Mbeki was making a stopover in Washington on Wednesday before heading to the Group of Eight summit at Sea Island, Georgia.
United States employers added almost a quarter of a million jobs in May, extending a nine-month hiring spree and accommodating enough job seekers to hold the unemployment rate steady at 5,6% of the labour force. Payrolls swelled by almost one million in the past three months alone, the US Department of Labour said on Friday.
The White House warned on Wednesday that the United States has entered a ”serious threat period” with regard to possible terrorist attacks that might target high-profile events until January 2005. ”Our law enforcement and Homeland Security officials are acting 24-7 to address the threats we face here at home,” said a spokesperson.
The target of two car bombs that exploded on Wednesday in Karachi, killing at least one person and wounding 17, was a privately run English-language school and not the nearby residence of the United States consul general in the southern Pakistani port city, a US State Department official said.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=66939">Car bombs explode in Karachi</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=66939">US enters ‘serious threat period'</a>
The man dubbed by federal agents as the ”Last Don”, Joseph ”Big Joey” Massino, has gone on trial in New York, with prosecutors hoping for a conviction that could deal a knockout blow to organised crime in the city. Massino, the alleged boss of the Bonanno crime family, is charged with seven murders and a host of racketeering charges.
Three of the four Massachusetts communities that married same-sex couples from outside the state have stopped issuing licenses to non-residents after receiving a warning from the state attorney general, who cited a 1913 law that bars them from marrying gay couples from other states.
More storms battered the upper central United States late on Saturday, a day after a tornado all but wiped an Iowa town off the map. Severe storms and funnel clouds were reported on Saturday night in a band across Nebraska, Iowa, northern Illinois and other states across the Great Plains and Midwest regions.
The first state-sanctioned gay marriages in Massachusetts were set to begin on Monday after the United States Supreme Court refused to step in and block the weddings. The high court’s decision on Friday was the last chance for gay marriage opponents to block the unions in the East Coast US state.
The FBI’s nearly -million effort to modernise its antiquated computer systems to help prevent terrorist attacks is ”not on a path to success,” according to an outside review completed weeks after the bureau director gave the United States Congress assurances about the programme.
United States President George Bush on Wednesday told a skeptical Arab world that the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by some members of the US military was ”abhorrent” and does not represent ”the America that I know”. He stopped short of apologising. ”People will be brought to justice,” Bush said.
Electronics giant Sony has jumped into the online music fray with a new download service similar to those from Apple and others, but linked to its Walkman music players. The Japanese firm formally launched Connect.com on Tuesday, offering song downloads for 99 United States cents.
A new worm raced across the internet on Monday, leaving millions of computers infected and disrupting systems controlling trains, banks and even the European Commission government offices. The Sasser worm is seen as a major threat because it spreads itself to any unprotected computer linked to the internet.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=65787">How to stop Sasser</a>
Apple Computer celebrated the first anniversary of its online music service on Wednesday, announcing it had sold 70-million songs and was still growing. Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said the figures show it is ”the number one online music service in the world” with some 70% of the market for legal music downloads.
Act two of the Michael Jackson child molestation case gets under way this week with a new cast of lawyers taking centre stage. ”It is imperative that I have the full attention of those who are representing me. My life is at stake,” the pop star said as he announced firing his two high-profile lawyers, Mark Geragos and Benjamin Brafman.
An empty Amtrak train ploughed into the back of a commuter-laden train near New York’s Penn Station on Monday, leaving 130 people with minor injuries, fire department officials said. The collision occurred just after 7am local time as the packed commuter train was waiting to enter the station.
About 75Â 000 years ago someone living in a cave overlooking the Indian Ocean bored holes in a set of shells and strung them as beads — the earliest known human jewellery. Uncovered in Blombos cave on the Indian Ocean shoreline in South Africa, the newly discovered beads were made from the shells of a type of mollusc.
Huge demand for its iPod portable digital music players helped Apple Computer triple its second-quarter earnings and easily beat Wall Street expectations. The company reported record sales of 807 000 iPods for the quarter, up more than 900% from the prior year.
Lindows on Wednesday changed the name of its Lindows OS operating system to Linspire, responding to a court’s refusal to halt Microsoft’s trademark infringement lawsuits outside the United States. Michael Robertson, founder and chief executive, said the company’s flagship Linux operating system would be renamed Linspire worldwide.