India has been made a conditional offer to stage a Formula One grand prix in 2009, Indian Olympic Association (IOA) president Suresh Kalmadi said on Thursday. ”We have received a letter in this regard from Bernie Ecclestone, CEO of Formula One. The IOA will be the promoter and the first event will be held in 2009,” he told a news conference.
Locally made Colgate products are ”100% safe”, the company said on Thursday. This followed a toothpaste-recall scare in the United States. Director Russell Pallard assured consumers that locally made Colgate products were ”100% safe, guaranteed”.
South Africa’s two-week-old public-sector strike should have been avoided and is damaging the country’s image abroad, the deputy leader of the governing African National Congress said on Thursday. ”I don’t think it’s doing any good for the country,” Zuma told the media, one day after thousands of extra workers joined the stoppage.
President Thabo Mbeki and South African editors will meet to discuss ”mutual concerns”, the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) said on Thursday. ”Sanef values good relations with the government and other stakeholders. This meeting will allow us to discuss issues of mutual concern and benefit,” said Sanef chairperson Jovial Rantao.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila arrived at Tuynhuys in Cape Town on Thursday for talks with President Thabo Mbeki. Kabila, who jetted into the city on Wednesday afternoon, is on an official visit to discuss, among other things, political and economic relations between South Africa and his mineral-rich country.
Britain’s leaders, war veterans and bereaved relatives on Thursday marked the 25th anniversary of victory in the Falklands War amid a mixture of celebration and sombre reflection. Queen Elizabeth II, Prime Minister Tony Blair and Baroness Margaret Thatcher, who was prime minister at the time, participated in a service marking the end of the conflict.
Australia have not won in South Africa since the turn of the millennium and going into Saturday’s Tri-Nations rugby opener at Newlands in Cape Town it doesn’t seem as if the trend will change. Former Springbok coach and player Carel Du Plessis believes the Boks are mentally and physically too strong to succumb to the Wallabies.
South Africa trails Western Europe and the United States when it comes to energy consciousness and the importance of saving power, the National Energy Efficiency Agency said on Thursday. The agency’s acting general operations manager, Barry Bredenkamp, said in a statement that this attitude should change.
African nations on Thursday agreed a landmark nine-year ban on international ivory commerce, which was immediately approved by a 171-nation United Nations forum, officials said. The ban will go into effect after the one-off sale by four Southern African nations of government-held stock of elephant tusks, thought to total about 50 tonnes.
Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi and visiting Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe want African leaders to agree next month to unite Africa under one government to help it solve its own problems, state media said on Thursday. The two men agreed in talks that the 53-nation African Union should be turned into an embryonic federal government.