The retail price of all grades of petrol will rise by between 68 cents and 69 cents per litre from Wednesday April 4, the Department of Minerals and Energy said on Friday. The price of 95 octane petrol was set to increase 68 cents per litre, while that of 93 and 91 octane would increase 69 cents respectively.
Better pay for public office bearers will help combat corruption, the head of the statutory body tasked with reviewing their remuneration said on Friday. Judge Dikgang Moseneke made the remark as the Independent Commission for the Remuneration of Public Office Bearers released what it said was a major review, after handing it to President Thabo Mbeki on Thursday.
Nearly 400 people have been killed over the past three days in Iraq as insurgents and sectarian militias ripped through a massive United States security crackdown concentrated around Baghdad. A series of coordinated bombings of Shi’ite marketplaces in and north of the capital defied a latest plea from embattled Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
President Thabo Mbeki on Friday told the African National Congress (ANC) Women’s League to forget about who would be the party’s next president and to focus on solving poverty and gender violence. ”I would advise you please forget that there’s a national conference of the ANC coming in December; we will come back to it another time,” Mbeki said.
A record 204 countries have entered the qualifying competition for the 2010 Soccer World Cup finals, Fifa said in a statement on Friday. The number beats the previous record of 199 teams that entered for the 2002 World Cup finals and only Bhutan, Brunei, Laos and the Philippines have not registered to take part.
The £100-million set to be gambled on the World Cup with bookmakers in Britain pales into insignificance when compared with the sums talked of being punted on the sub-continent, where betting in many countries is illegal, but where amounts of perhaps half as much as Britain’s total can be wagered on a single game.
Mobs of enthusiastic fans descend on her every time she is spotted on the busy streets of Lusaka; many shake hands with her while a good number fall over each other to merely catch a glimpse of their overnight national heroine. At home, in a little-developed settlement east of the Zambian capital, boxer Esther Phiri has to remain indoors much of the time to avoid crowds.
Berti Vogts, Germany’s former coach now in charge of the Nigerian Super Eagles, once said that his enemies were so bent on criticising him, regardless of how his team performed, that if he walked on water they would probably accuse him of being unable to swim.
A New Zealand university researcher has won a government grant to study the lifestyle habits of head-banging heavy metal fans. The $68 000 grant over three years to student Dave Snell will allow him to carry out his study, entitled "The Everyday Life of Bogans: Identity and Community Among Heavy Metal Fans".
A Sudanese man armed with a knife hijacked a Sudan Airways plane from Libya and forced it to land at Khartoum airport early on Friday but was later arrested by Special Forces, a civil aviation authority official said. ”The hijacker burst into the pilot’s cabin about one-and-a-half hours from landing …,” Abdel Hafiz Abdel-Rahim said.