Sudanese security services have banned a demonstration planned to coincide with visits by United States Secretary of State Colin Powell and United Nationa Secretary General Kofi Annan, a government newspaper reported on Tuesday. The demonstration was to be staged primarily to protest alleged ”US and UN double standards”.
A hardy group of 181 passengers boarded a jet at Singapore airport on Monday for the world’s longest commercial flight — an inaugural non-stop service to New York designed to appeal to time-pressed Asian and American business executives. Singapore Airlines said it would knock four hours off a one-stop service and would cut down on delays.
Nothing gets dedicated techies hotter under the collar than a discussion about Microsoft’s software monopoly. Another subject that will get them talking is open-source software. Open-source is the antithesis of what Microsoft and other companies have been pursuing over the years. Mark Shuttleworth speaks to the <i>M&G</i> about the coming software revolution.
Soon it will be possible to write an Internet address in Korean, Hebrew, Arabic and many other languages that do not use the Western alphabet. At the moment, you can write a Web page using any script you choose, but the address of that page requires at least some knowledge of the alphabet used in Western Europe, the United States and other predominantly English-speaking countries.
Technology group Altron says it has made strong advances in terms of its black economic empowerment (BEE) and acquisition programmes and that much emphasis has been placed on the group meeting the anticipated requirements of the BEE charter for the information, communications and technology (ICT) sector.
Zambia has released 14 coup plotters from prison after President Levy Mwanawasa commuted their death sentences to prison terms earlier this year. The 14 junior soldiers, who were convicted for their role in a foiled 1997 military coup against then president Frederick Chiluba, were released after serving one-third of their 10-year prison sentences.
The executive in charge of circulation for the <i>Chicago Sun-Times</i> has resigned, two weeks after the paper’s parent company announced it had inflated its circulation figures for several years. Another Chicago-based newspaper company also announced two weeks ago that it overstated circulation numbers.
President Thabo Mbeki on Tuesday called on a conference in Cape Town on the Palestinian issue to produce results that could be discussed at the African Union summit in Ethiopia next week. Mbeki said the Palestinian problem should be included among the challenges facing Africa.
Scores protest at Palestinian meeting
Media and entertainment holding group Johnnic Holdings on Tuesday reported a 124% leap in pro forma headline earnings from R55-million to R123-million for the year ended March. It attributed the increase to improved earnings from the entertainment and media businesses, among others.
A rocket attack on an Israeli town killed a three-year-old boy and a man on Monday as Palestinian militants stepped up their assaults on Israeli targets before the removal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip. The attack on Sderot is the first in which one of the hundreds of rudimentary rockets fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip in the past three years has proved fatal.