UN officials and aid workers say that millions of North Koreans will face famine and starvation during the country’s winter if the international community cuts off humanitarian food aid in retaliation for their government’s nuclear test. Before the recent test explosion the people of North Korea face a food crisis after a long-term decline in…

Dubai’s ruling family says a legal case filed against it in Miami in the United States for allegedly enslaving thousands of young camel jockeys is without foundation. The law suit accuses Dubai’s ruler, his brother Hamdan and 500 others of being involved in trafficking and enslaving young children from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sudan and Mauritania. The…

British comedian Sacha Baron who plays a fictional TV reporter called Borat has been invited by Rakhat Aliyev, Kazakh first deputy foreign minister and a powerful son-in-law of President Nursultan Nazarbayev to go to Kazakhstan to see the truth for himself. No doubt the Kazakh authorities have invited the comedian TV reporter to show him…

The US State Department Mozambique’s recently announced that Mozambique’s 670km long railway line, Sena Railway, which has not been used for 20 years, has been cleared of mines and unexploded ordnance laid in 1984 by insurgents during Mozambique’s civil war. The railway connects Mozambique’s main port city, Beira, with its resource-rich interior. The US State…

When wearing a money belt, first make sure it is cotton and machine washable, they can get awfully hot snug under your clothing. Secondly, use one of those small oblong plastic wallets you often get from Forex bureau’s to keep your money in, inside your money belt as sweaty money is both unattractive to handle…

Reuters recently reported that in Miami, Florida, a leaping spotted eagle ray stabbed an 81-year-old Florida boater in the chest, leaving its poisonous barbed sting lodged close to his heart in an incident very similar to the one that killed Australian TV naturalist Steve Irwin last month. The grandfather of two survived.

A shuttle boat powered entirely by the sun has been launched on the Serpentine lake in London’s Hyde Park. The 14.5m (48ft) Solarshuttle, thought to be the biggest of its kind in the UK, will carry 42 passengers every half-hour between the north side of the Serpentine and the jetty in the south, near the…

Darts, the game of throwing small pointed missiles at a board divided into scoring segments is normally associated with British pubs and the consumption of large amounts of alcohol, has found a new following in ultra-conservative Iran. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians, including Muslim clerics and soldiers, are enthusiastically picking up their ‘arras’. Darts brings…

Daintree forest, a World Heritage site in northern Queensland, one of the oldest rainforests on the planet and home to Australia’s most diverse range of species, has been saved from becoming a housing estate. The land was sold off by the state’s maverick Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen in the early 1980s, and for the last 20…

The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office advise against all but essential travel to, or through, the far southern provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and Songkhla, where there is continuing violence due to insurgency and civil unrest. Since January 2004, there have been regular attacks including bombings and shootings. There were a number of explosions in…