Celebrities and sun-seekers from the East and West are fuelling a property boom in Montenegro that has seen prices surge two-fold in the year since the tiny Balkan state won independence. Investment speculators led the influx, snapping up houses, apartments and plots of land wedged between Montenegro’s craggy mountains and its coastline.
Britney Spears, Paul McCartney, Sting and Paul Simon have all travelled to Sri Lanka for a big-bucks taste of tropical luxury. But an escalating war with Tamil Tiger rebels and increasingly gruesome headlines on the human rights situation means that the rich or famous are now staying away — and rooms in the island’s boutique hotels are going for a song.
In a vast wilderness in eastern Russia, scientists and tourism entrepreneurs are anxiously working out how much is left of one of the world’s great natural wonders, Geyser Valley. The far eastern Kamchatka peninsula boasts nature at its most unpredictable, as demonstrated by a recent landslide that obliterated many of its prized geysers.
The JSE started to strengthen at midday after a weaker opening on Monday morning. At 12.05pm the all-share index was up 0,45%. Resources strengthened 0,93%, while the gold and platinum indices were 1,03% and 0,75% firmer respectively. Industrials climbed 0,08% and financials lifted 0,15%. Banks increased 0,66%.
An Egyptian engineer who was convicted in 2002 of spying for Israel has died in jail in unclear circumstances. Sherif al-Filali had initially been found innocent of espionage in 2001, and a judge called him a true patriot because he turned himself in as soon as he realised he may have been involved in a crime.
The three biggest gold firms in South Africa offered workers a 6% wage hike on Monday, a union official said. Unions declared a dispute, the first legal step towards going on strike, on June 20 after mining firms failed to present an offer on the first day of formal negotiations, but later agreed to return to talks.
The seventh and final book in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series has become online retailer Amazon’s most pre-ordered product. Amazon said that demand for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows passed the record of 1,5-million copies ordered online before the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Kenya’s annual inflation rose to 11,1% in June from 6,3% in May on the back of price increases in food, alcohol and tobacco, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday. However, underlying inflation that excludes food prices fell to 5,2% from 5,7% in May.
Zimbabwe’s leader Robert Mugabe, under fire at home over a crumbling economy, said on Sunday that Africa needed to get its act together and warned that no amount of external aid would lift it out of its quagmire. ”We must unite, not just politically but economically,” he told a cheering crowd in Accra.
The South African Football Association (Safa) has denied that members of its executive committee are seeking R500Â 000 each for supporting South Africa’s successful bid to host the 2010 Soccer World Cup. Safa has now agreed to pay an honorarium of R30Â 000 to members who supported the bid.