Goalkeeper Andres Palop played down his match-winning penalty shoot-out saves which sealed a second successive UEFA Cup crown for Sevilla on Wednesday. Palop kept out three Espanyol spot-kicks as the holders won 3-1 in the shoot-out after a thrilling all-Spanish final had ended 2-2 after 120 minutes at Hampden Park.
DaimlerChrysler’s sale of its Chrysler division to Cerberus Capital Management will not adversely affect customers of the brand in South Africa, says Jeff Osborne, CEO of the Retail Motor Industry Organisation of South Africa (RMI). He says the acquisition is regarded by the RMI as a positive move.
The United Nations said on Wednesday an independent probe was being conducted into whether UN vehicles were used to smuggle diamonds from a mine in Zimbabwe. In January, the industry’s World Diamond Council said it received reports that diamonds in Zimbabwe were being smuggled into South Africa.
Post-war art broke the -million mark for a second straight night on Wednesday as Christie’s sold a record-smashing -million-worth of contemporary art, the second-highest total for any auction in history. This time it was Andy Warhol’s Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I), which soared to ,72-million.
South African-based media group Naspers will terminate its listing on the Nasdaq Global Market and apply for secondary listing on the London Stock Exchange. Naspers said the decision to delist driven by high costs of maintaining the listing and complying with US obligations, especially the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.
The rand has broadly stabilised and this is a much better level for the currency to be at, according to Professor Ben Smit, director of the Bureau for Economic Research (BER), who was speaking during a conference on Thursday morning."It is relatively stable within a relatively broad band," said Smit.
Gaza slid deeper into a factional war on Wednesday as another 16 people died in gun battles between rival armed groups. Palestinians held rallies in Ramallah, in the West Bank, and in Gaza City protesting against the violence and calling for a halt to a wave of killing that has claimed 41 lives in the past four days.
A three-week wave of cyber-attacks on the small Baltic country of Estonia is causing alarm across the Western alliance, with Nato urgently examining the offensive and its implications. Nato has dispatched cyber-terrorism experts to Tallinn to investigate and to help the Estonians beef up their electronic defences.
Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi escaped unharmed after his convoy hit a landmine that failed to explode in northern Mogadishu, a Somali official said on Thursday. Gedi was returning from a ceremony at the capital’s main airport for the departure of the bodies of four Ugandan African Union peacekeepers killed the previous day.
A crucial meeting of the World Bank’s executive board adjourned on Wednesday night without a decision on Paul Wolfowitz’s future as president — while outside the boardroom the parties manoeuvred to resolve the controversy. Wolfowitz is striving to negotiate a deal that will allow him to resign while passing some of the blame on to the bank.