The South African rand broke free of its narrow trading range on Friday, breaching the R6,00 per dollar level in afternoon trade. The rand was quoted at R5,9913 per dollar from an overnight close of R6,1001 — the first time it has traded below R6,00 since October 1999.
It is a week since Leigh Matthews was last seen, but the police and the public are working as hard as ever to trace the kidnapped student, police said on Friday. ”We must find her, that’s all. There is no way anyone will lose hope,” said Superintendent Chris Wilken. He said support from the public has not diminished.
The Rolling Stones used to sit at the table in the corner for breakfast and their first snifter of the day. At 3pm. "That’s when their day started," says George Watson, owner of The Dock bar and restaurant in Montauk for 31 years. Officially part of the Hamptons, Montauk is in every sense another planet. Where the Hamptons is Gucci, Montauk is more grunge.
Benin customs police said on Thursday they have arrested four traffickers trying to smuggle 27 Beninese and Nigerian children out of the country on a minibus, first to Togo and then on to Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. The traffickers were stopped with the children aged between six and 12 at the Hillacondji customs post on the Togo border.
Hong Kong shut down for business and battened down the hatches as a tropical storm packing winds of 75kph slammed into the territory on Friday. At least two people were injured and 10 flights in and out of the city were cancelled before Tropical Storm Kompasu made landfall in the rural north-eastern Sai Kung district.
Eugene de Kock, the former Vlakplaas commander, on Thursday linked the 1989 Motherwell bombing to the earlier murder of activist Mathew Goniwe and three others, known as the Cradock Four. De Kock was testifying at the Gideon Nieuwoudt Truth and Reconciliation Committee amnesty hearing in Port Elizabeth.
Two more burial sites have been discovered in Kimberley, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Thursday. The finding comes after last May’s discovery of 180 unmarked graves in the city. Developers and archaeologists are divided as to what should be done about the matter.
The South African government’s policy to reduce the risk of mother-to-child transmission of HIV remains unchanged, Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Thursday. The Medicines Control Council has recommended that a combination of anti-retrovirals be used instead of a single dose of nevirapine.
Two fires broke out at exactly the same time in two buildings at the New Somerset hospital in Cape Town on Friday morning, emergency officials said. Officials suspect they were started on purpose. The fires were put out within 20 minutes of firefighters arriving on the scene.
South African elder statesman Nelson Mandela, who turns 86 on Sunday.