South Africa’s manufacturing output growth accelerated to an unadjusted 3,5% in volume terms year-on-year in February, from a revised 1,2% in January, official data showed on Wednesday. Compared with January, manufacturing production in volume terms increased by a seasonally adjusted 2,7%, Statistics South Africa said.
Islamist fighters in Somalia seized a strategic town north of Mogadishu on Wednesday for the second time in a fortnight, a spokesperson for the insurgents said. Jowhar is the most significant of several towns the rebels have captured in recent months, highlighting the inability of the Western-backed interim government to impose its authority.
The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) will seek to reshape its constitution and organisational structure at its national conference, the party said on Wednesday. The party will hold its seventh annual national conference at the University of Fort Hare in July.
The global economic outlook is becoming increasingly grim as the United States appears unable to escape recession from a housing meltdown, the effects of which are still spreading, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Wednesday. Global expansion is set to slow to 3,7% in 2008 amid an unfolding crisis that began in the United States, the IMF said.
South Africa all-rounder Jacques Kallis was on Wednesday named as the Leading Cricketer in the World for 2007 by the 2008 edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, cricket’s major annual reference work. He became the fifth recipient of the award, introduced in 2004.
South Africa’s conservation areas are facing ”real and urgent” threats, and first world countries must do more to help, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk said on Wednesday. As a result of climate change, the Kruger National Park could experience more intense rainfall interspersed with longer dry spells, he said.
China became the world’s biggest producer of gold last year, overtaking South Africa, which held top spot for 100 years, independent precious-metals consultancy GFMS said on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the price of gold was on course to reach a record high of $1 100 an ounce in 2008, the group added in its latest annual <i>Gold Survey</i>.
Yahoo! will begin showing homemade videos on its online photo-sharing site, Flickr, in a long-anticipated move that may be too late to lure most people away from the internet’s dominant video channel, Google’s YouTube. Flickr’s video technology is the latest example of Yahoo! trying to catch up to Google in a crucial battleground.
Federal cybersecurity officials are trying to develop an early-warning system that alerts authorities to incoming computer attacks targeting critical United States infrastructure, says Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. His keynote speech on Tuesday at the RSA security conference, however, was light on details.
Hundreds of coffee-obsessed consumers in the United States chimed in moments after Starbucks launched a website asking customers to pitch changes the company should make to revive its struggling US business. And they have kept those thoughts coming, by the thousands.