In a capital so dangerous that only the "walking dead" are said to venture out after dark, nothing could draw an obedient son from the safety of his parents' suburban home into the deserted night. Amplats threatens South Africa strikers with sacking
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – World no. 1 platinum producer Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) said on Monday it was too early to tell whether South African miners on an illegal strike will return after the company told them to resume work or face sacking. “We will have an idea later in the morning,” Amplats spokeswoman Mpumi Sithole told Reuters when asked whether the miners were reporting for duty. But a labor leader at Amplats said the strike was on-going as no agreement had been reached. “It’s only the management that decided the workers should go back to work without an agreement. …
BBC says its news chief, her deputy 'step aside'
The BBC says its news chief and her deputy have 'stepped aside' while the broadcaster deals with the fallout from a child abuse scandal that forced its director-general to resign. Total CEO confirms talks to sell assets in Nigeria
ABU DHABI (Reuters) – The Chief Executive of French oil major Total said he would not deny a report that the firm was in talks to sell assets in Nigeria, worth about $2.4 billion, to China’s Sinopec. A Bloomberg report last week said Asia’s largest refiner China’s Sinopec was close to buying stakes in Nigerian onshore oil blocks from Total. “Yes we are discussing with certain buyers about selling certain assets in Nigeria,” said Total CEO Christophe de Margerie, declining to name the potential buyer or value of the deal but saying he would not deny the report. …
BBC head of news "steps aside" over abuse scandal
LONDON (Reuters) – The two most senior figures at BBC News stepped aside on Monday a day after the chairman of the broadcaster's governing body said it needed a radical overhaul to survive a child sex abuse scandal, it said. Helen Boaden, the director of BBC News, and her deputy Steve Mitchell, stepped aside two days after the director general quit to take the blame for the airing of false child sex abuse allegations against a former politician. … Iran VP: We will break Obama's 'grasping hands'
Iran’s vice president said Monday that Tehran will break the ‘grasping hands’ of newly re-elected President Barack Obama, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Tears welled in Li Jian's eyes whenever President Hu Jintao mentioned the environment in his speech to Communist Party delegates gathered in the Great Hall of the People during China's most important political event of the decade. 
DUBAI (Reuters) – French oil company Total still hopes to restart gas production at the Elgin Franklin platform in the North Sea by year end but it may not be possible until early next year, a senior executive said on Sunday. The fields were shut after a gas leak in May and the company had aimed to restart production by the end of the year, but that may depend on whether British safety regulator the HSE is happy with the company's restart plan. "We still have the objective of restarting the fields at the end of this year to the beginning of next year. … 
Gaza militants launched 10 rockets into southern Israel by midday Monday, including one that struck the yard of a house, the military said. The barrage ramps up pressure on the Israeli government to stage a large-scale operation aimed at stopping the persistent attacks. 
Through a video monitor in a military courtroom near Seattle, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales saw young Afghan girls smile beneath bright head coverings before they described the bloodbath he's accused of committing. 
BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese Communist Party leader Hu Jintao's opening speech at the ongoing 18th Party Congress was a disappointment to many listeners, offering no major signals that the leadership is willing to advance political reform. The 64-page keynote speech he delivered was couched in the usual conservative and Marxist terminology, but one paragraph buried deep in the text was just what proponents of a long-running experiment in public policy consultations have been waiting for. The section in question urged the ruling party to "improve the system of socialist consultative democracy". … 
The attack came seemingly out of nowhere. As the 28-year-old Bangladeshi man dug around trash bins one recent afternoon for scrap metal, two women and a man set upon him with a knife. He screamed as he fell. Rushed to the hospital, he was treated for a gash to the back of his thigh. 
Heavy rains and seas whipped up by strong winds have flooded Venice and brought the lagoon city's high tide mark to its sixth-highest level since records began being kept 150 years ago. 
A strong earthquake collapsed a bridge and damaged ancient Buddhist pagodas in northern Myanmar, and piecemeal reports from the underdeveloped mining region said mines collapsed and as many as 12 people were feared dead.