The JSE was mostly flat by midday on Tuesday, with no fresh news to give the local market direction. Traders said with the United States market disappointing on Monday — it ended up just nine points after being ahead over 100 at one stage — the local market lacked impetus.
Italian international goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon has said he intends to stay with Juventus despite the club being relegated to the second division for involvement in match-fixing. Buffon told Turin’s La Stampa newspaper that he had no intention of following other top names who have joined other clubs.
Rescuers battled heavy rains in south-west Ethiopia on Tuesday to save up to 20 000 people marooned by floods that killed at least 125 on the weekend as forecasters warned of more downpours. Poor weather grounded helicopter flights in the remote region, forcing authorities to deploy emergency personnel by boat to at least five inundated villages.
A Zimbabwe businessman who police say insulted President Robert Mugabe has been arrested under tough security laws that bar any remarks ”undermining the authority or insulting” the 82-year-old leader. Tichaona Muchabaiwa was arrested on the weekend on charges of uttering abusive words about Mugabe, the official Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Three Mexican fishermen who drifted more than 8 000km across the Pacific have been rescued near the Marshall Islands after at least three months at sea, an official said on Tuesday. The fishermen, who survived by catching seabirds and drinking rainwater, were picked up on August 9 by a Taiwanese fishing boat.
World oil prices slipped lower on Tuesday as a fragile truce between Israel and Lebanon entered its second day. New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in September, slid 18 cents to ,35 per barrel in electronic deals before the official opening of the United States market.
The death toll from China’s strongest typhoon in five decades jumped to 295 on Tuesday and was expected to climb higher as scores of bodies of fishermen and sailors were found at sea, a state news agency reported. At least 59 bodies were found on Monday in waters off Fuding, a port on the south-eastern coast.
The Department of Minerals and Energy could implement a retail petrol-price cut of 32c per litre (c/l) on September 6 2006, provided the daily over-recovery remains at or above the August 14 level. South Africa’s daily unleaded petrol-price over-recovery soared to 51,158 c/l on August 14 from only 21,136 c/l on August 9.
Partners wanting to tie the knot on the Thai paradise island of Phuket will have to wait a while or find another venue after the main city ran out of marriage certificates, officials said on Tuesday. An official from Muang Phuket registration department said it used its last certificate two weeks ago.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea on Monday named Ricardo Mangue Obama Nfubea the country’s new Prime Minister and asked him to form a government, national television said. Mangue Obama Nfubea’s predecessor and the whole government of the West African state had resigned on Thursday.