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JOHANNESBURG: South African prosecutors on Thursday charged 270 mine workers with the murder of 34 striking colleagues shot dead by police, in a decision panned as "madness".
Police said they acted in self defence when they opened fire on workers at a platinum mine outside Rustenburg, northwest of Johannesburg, killing 34, after a stand-off that had already killed 10 including two police officers.
The incident was the worst day of police violence in South Africa since the end of white-minority apartheid rule in 1994.
Prosecuting authorities said the 270 detained workers would face trial for the murder of their colleagues.
"The court today charged all the workers with murder, under the common purpose law," the spokesman for the prosecutor's office Frank Lesenyego said.
He did not give details saying they would be revealed in court next week.
Julius Malema, a former youth leader with the ruling ANC, however, said he was dismayed by the decision to ...
WASHINGTON: New claims for US unemployment insurance benefits held steady last week, the Labor Department said Thursday, a fresh sign of stabilization in the pace of layoffs.
Initial jobless claims stood at 374,000 in the week ended August 25, the same as in the upwardly revised number of the prior week, the department reported.
Jobless claims, a sign of the pace of layoffs, were at their highest level since mid-July. Most analysts had expected a decline to ...
ATHENS: Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said on Thursday that "painful" cuts worth 11.5 billion euros ($14.4 billion) were inevitable to keep the country in the eurozone.
"Many of these cuts are difficult, painful," Samaras told a meeting of his conservative New Democracy party.
"But they are inevitable. Without them, the country would return to zero credibility and, in essence, would exit the eurozone," he added.
"This is the last package of such cuts," Samaras said.
Finance Minister Yannis ...
NEW ORLEANS: Tropical Storm Isaac dumped more rain onto an already saturated Gulf Coast on Thursday as residents sought safety from flooding and officials warned of tornadoes and life-threatening storm surges.
The National Hurricane Center said the slow-moving mass of fierce weather, which was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm Wednesday, would weaken and move north but continue to produce heavy rain for two days.
At 1200 GMT, Isaac was located about 125 miles (205 ...
WASHINGTON: US consumer spending rebounded in July after holding flat in June, official data showed Thursday, a crucial improvement for boosting growth in the sluggish economy.
Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the nation's economic activity, rose 0.4 percent in July, the strongest gain since February, the Commerce Department reported.
The growth slightly missed expectations of a 0.5 percent rise, but still was up sharply from zero in June.
"Consumer spending growth remains weak despite ...
CAPE TOWN: Former Greece prime minister George Papandreou said Thursday that his country might have avoided a bailout if the economy had not been robbed by funds being funnelled to tax havens.
Papandreou told the opening of the Socialist International congress, which is held every four years and of which he is president, that $21 trillion was hidden in tax havens around the world.
"Whether it is in developed or developing nations, it is our citizens that ...
BEIJING: The death toll from a gas explosion at a coal mine in southwest China has risen to 26 and rescue workers were trying to pull out another 21 still trapped underground, state media said Thursday.
A total of 154 miners were working underground at the Xiaojiawan mine in the city of Panzhihua in Sichuan province when the blast occurred on Wednesday afternoon, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Rescuers had pulled 107 people out of the ...More Articles...
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