Police firing rubber bullets and tear gas sent men, women and children scattering as they herded them into their shacks in a crackdown on striking miners at a platinum mine. Yesterday’s show of force follows a South African government vow to halt illegal protests and disarm strikers who have stopped work at one gold and six platinum mines north-west of Johannesburg. The strikes have destabilised South Africa’s critical mining sector.
It was the first police action since officers killed 34 miners on August 16.
Tourists delighted by eruption
A terrifying eruption of one of the world’s most active volcanoes tapered off into a draw for delighted tourists, who snapped photos from a neighbouring colonial city and made plans to take night hikes to see glowing rivers of lava.
Villagers are returning to their homes on the flanks of the Volcano of Fire as it wound down its largest eruption in nearly four decades, spewing smaller amounts of ash and lava.
Guatemalan authorities reduced the alert level from the highest, red, to orange around the Volcan del Fuego, or Volcano of Fire, six miles from the colonial city of Antigua, and said Thursday’s ferocious lava flow was now two smaller, 3,000ft streams.
US university bomb scares
Tens of thousands of people evacuated university campuses in Texas, North Dakota and Ohio after telephone bomb threats prompted officials to warn students and staff to get away as quickly as possible.
All three campuses were eventually deemed safe and reopened by the evening. The FBI is working to determine whether the threats to the University of Texas, North Dakota State University, and Hiram College in Ohio were related.
The University of Texas received a call about 8.35am local time from a man claiming to be with al-Qaeda who said he had placed bombs all over the 50,000-student Austin campus.
Famous map sold on web
An electric light-up map that educated visitors at the site of the Battle of Gettysburg for decades went under the hammer for for $14,000 (€11,000) in an online auction.
The 30 by 30ft map, weighing 12 tons and made partly from asbestos, had been featured inside an auditorium in the Gettysburg National Military Park’s old visitor’s centre in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, since 1963.
It was sold by the US government because the National Park Service no longer wanted or needed it.
The map helped people understand the Civil War’s bloodiest battle by using blinking lights to demonstrate the positions of landmarks.