Nineteen South African passport holders deported from the Democratic Republic of Congo for their alleged involvement in a coup plot arrived home on Sunday night. Their flight from Kinshasa landed at Johannesburg International airport just after 6.20pm.
Senior United States marine officers are under investigation for an alleged cover-up of a massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha last November — an atrocity being described as ”worse than Abu Ghraib”. The marine corps commandant, General Michael Magee, has flown to Iraq to lecture his troops on the laws of war and was reported to be considering dismissing high-ranking officers.
Relief supplies and aid workers on Sunday poured into the earthquake-devastated areas of Java, Indonesia, as the death toll soared to more than 4Â 300 people. Hundreds of soldiers and Red Cross volunteers joined anxious residents combing through the rubble of the estimated 25Â 000 destroyed homes, but only a handful of survivors were discovered.
The real hotel manager behind the film Hotel Rwanda has warned that a genocide on the scale of the one that wiped out 900 000 Rwandans could happen in Darfur. ”The refugee camps in Chad are just like those in which exiled Rwandans were living in 1993, without food, shelter or education,” said Paul Rusesabagina.
Children visit the big barn in Suffolk to buy beautifully crafted rabbit hutches and bird tables. Their parents pick up pet food or bales of hay. But in a dark warehouse behind the farm shop more deadly equipment is being built: David Lucas, on the surface an ordinary farmer, makes and exports gallows to countries in Africa and the Middle East.
The white ghost ship rolled in the Atlantic swell as the rescue boats approached it 70 nautical miles off Ragged Point, one of the most easterly places on the Caribbean island of Barbados. The yacht was unmarked, 6m long, and when Barbadian coastguard officers boarded it, they made a gruesome find.
MasterCard International and Standard Bank this month announced the launch of the pilot of OneSmart MasterCard PayPass at Standard Bank’s head office campus in Johannesburg, South Africa. The PayPass is a "contactless" payment feature that provides card holders with a faster and more convenient way to pay for their purchases.
Bank fees, we are told by a recent voluminous report for the Competition Commission, have little to do with costs. They also appear to have little to do with service, as you can pay a lot or almost nothing for exactly the same facility. Most consumers know that shopping around for the most competitive home loan can lead to substantial savings.
Absa, South Africa’s largest retail bank, has launched a new product that will rapidly expand access to a range of banking services that have traditionally only been available to the affluent. FlexiSelect, a new concept in banking, promises to usher millions of South Africans into the financial mainstream.
The South African economy is still braced for robust growth in 2006 and the trend could well be sustained and even improved in the next year, says Absa economist Ridle Markus. He adds that the domestic economy will continue to be powered by growth in consumer spending.