World motorcycling champion Valentino Rossi said on Wednesday he would be sticking to two wheels and not joining the Ferrari team to race in Formula One. ”I will continue, at least for some time more, to race motorbikes,” the Italian told the official Ansa news agency.
Essop Pahad has a communications headache. In public he’ll only talk about the media’s problems. In reality, it’s him who has the bigger challenge. As President Thabo Mbeki’s right-hand man, Pahad is Minister in the Presidency, in charge of government communications. Last week, he told Parliament how all this was going (very well), and assessed the media’s performance (not doing too well).
A new variation of card skimming at automated teller machines (ATMs), which gives criminals access to customers’ bank accounts, has gripped the country, Absa said on Wednesday. The thieves, using a hand-held device, make a duplicate copy of the customer’s card, giving them full access to the customer’s account.
Rival militiamen renewed fighting on Wednesday on the northern edge of Somalia’s lawless capital, witnesses and medical sources said. More than 140 people — mostly non-combatants caught in the crossfire — were killed in eight days of fighting in Mogadishu earlier this month between Islamic militias and a rival alliance of secular warlords.
The increase in South Africa’s consumer price index excluding mortgage rate changes (CPIX) for metro and other areas, which is used by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) for its inflation target, was up 3,7% year-on-year in April after a 3,8% increase in March, Statistics South Africa said on Wednesday.
An al-Qaeda-linked umbrella group in Iraq on Wednesday denied any link to a suspect, whose alleged confessions were aired on Jordanian television, in an internet statement posted on an Islamist website. "We don’t even know the individual shown on Jordanian television," the Mujahedin Consultative Council said.
Jurors deliberated for a fifth day on Wednesday in the fraud trial of former Enron chief executives Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay, after a separate trial of Lay before a judge on banking charges concluded. The eight women and four men, who have already debated for about 24 hours over four days, have given no indication of their progress.
South Africa’s national air carrier South African Airlines (SAA) has signed a consent order with the competition commission to pay R55-million in administrative penalties for fixing prices and fuel-levy charges on flight tickets. The airline was also penalised for abusing its dominant position in the domestic market.
The World Bank believes Zimbabwe has the capacity to reclaim its position as the breadbasket of Southern Africa, Harare’s The Herald newspaper reported on Wednesday. For this to happen the country would have to revitalise its road, railway and water infrastructure, the paper’s website quoted World Bank country manager Sudhir Chitale as saying.
The Wallabies will play a more forward-orientated game under new coach John Connolly, team vice-captain Nathan Sharpe said on Wednesday. Connolly has shown his intentions to restore order at the set pieces by appointing noted ”scrum doctor” Alec Evans as an assistant to forwards coach Michael Foley.