As if ordained by an all-powerful soccer oracle — or the product of uncanny premonition — Mamelodi Sundowns and Orlando Pirates have been billed to play their final Premier Soccer League game of the season against each other at Pretoria’s Loftus stadium on May 13.
Former Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling spent nine weeks listening in large part to his former underlings say or imply that he misled investors by saying all was well at the energy giant when accounting tricks and weak ventures fed financial rot. Now he’s fighting back, having logged three days testifying in his fraud and conspiracy trial with a fourth on Thursday and more to come next week.
Chinese police have concluded 121 skulls found in a ravine with their tops missing were byproducts of a local handicraft industry using human bone as a vital ingredient, state media reported on Thursday. A farmer surnamed Qiao, a resident of the northwestern province of Qinghai, had hacked the skulls from the bodies of unmarked graves and sold them to two artists in neighbouring Gansu province.
Banking group Absa was granted an urgent interdict by the Pretoria High Court on Wednesday against ”snake man” Jan Abel Manamela to stop him from releasing snakes or other dangerous reptiles or animals in the bank. Manamela was sentenced to three years imprisonment when he released five puffadders in the reception area of Absa’s head office in Johannesburg.
Sony shares rose on Thursday following a newspaper report that the Japanese electronics giant is set to beat its own profit forecast thanks to strong sales of flat-panel televisions. Sony could exceed its operating profit forecast of ¥100-billion ($844-million) by 10 to 20% in the year to March, the <i>Nihon Keizai Shimbun</i> said.
Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) chairperson Paris Mashile has a problem. Looming legislative changes and an exodus of top staff are threatening to push the troubled telecommunications and broadcast regulator into full-blown crisis. At least six senior managers have resigned since January and three members of the seven-person council are due to step down in June.
One of Sicily’s most senior anti-mafia prosecutors forecast a war inside Cosa Nostra on Wednesday if its leaders failed to agree on a successor to Bernardo Provenzano, the ”boss of bosses” seized on Tuesday. Investigators believe the fugitive godfather established a ”directorate” of up to seven mobsters to run the organisation.
Hijacker: ”Ladies and gentlemen. Here the captain. Please sit down, keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board. So sit.” Air traffic controller: ”Er, uh … calling Cleveland centre … You’re unreadable. Say again slowly.” Hijackers: [to passengers] ”Don’t move. Shut up … Don’t move. Stop. Sit, sit, sit down. Sit down … [in Arabic] That’s it, that’s it, that’s it … [in English] Down, down … ”
Italy’s centre-left leader, Romano Prodi, brushed aside fears yesterday that his election victory could be reversed, but admitted it could be more than a month before the country had a new government. ”Our victory is safe,” he said as electoral officials set about re-examining more than 40 000 contested votes which the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, insisted could change the outcome.
Eight council employees in the Ekurhuleni Municipality have defrauded the government of R120-million over the past year and imposed "apartheid-like" segregation at their workplace, an internal forensic investigation has found. The investigation resulted in charges of fraud, theft and corruption being brought against the eight municipal employees.