A European Union ban on ostrich imports and meat from two Western Cape districts will not be devastating, the South African Ostrich Business Chamber (SAOBC) said on Thursday. ”It is the low season for ostrich consumption in Europe so most of the abattoirs are closed …, so the effect will not be [as] big as it was in 2004,” said Anton Kruger, chief executive of the SAOBC.
Iran rebuffed Western hopes of a breakthrough in the Iran nuclear crisis on Thursday, saying it has no plans to respond in talks in Brussels to an international offer to curb its atomic plans. A senior Iranian official made the comment hours before Tehran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, was due to have dinner with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
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Two French revellers died and a third was feared drowned after more than half-a-million football fans took to the streets early on Thursday to celebrate their side’s qualification for the World Cup final. Across France the night’s celebrations were mostly peaceful — if noisy — with firecrackers and fireworks competing with drums and car horns.
Police in Zimbabwe are hunting the attackers of a prominent white opposition lawmaker amid calls for Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai to step down, reports said on Thursday. Trudy Stevenson, the MDC legislator for Harare North, was attacked on Sunday in the Harare township of Mabvuku by a group of about 40 youths.
Israeli tanks and troops ploughed deeper into Gaza on Thursday, killing six Palestinians and occupying three former Jewish settlements in their biggest offensive since leaving the territory last year. Helicopter gunships and artillery pounded the territory, as troops moved further into northern and southern Gaza Strip, coming under heavy fire after a ninth consecutive night of air strikes.
South Africa is ”well placed” to discuss this week’s missile tests with North Korea, Japan’s Vice Foreign Minister said on Thursday, citing Pretoria’s good diplomatic relations with Pyongyang. North Korea on Wednesday fired a salvo of seven missiles of various types into the Sea of Japan that separates the Korean peninsula from the Japanese islands, sparking an international outcry.
If you are one of the 400-million users of Microsoft Office, prepare to feel confused, lost and possibly abandoned. The user interface in next year’s version, Office System 2007, has been completely changed, and there is no going back. The file formats have changed as well, though the old ones are still supported.
A Polish priest with a penchant for a bet has slipped out of his parish in the central Polish town of Lowicz, taking with him the collection box, local press reports said on Thursday. The faithful at the Holy Spirit parish in Lowicz were a bit bemused at not seeing Father Franciszek Augustynski since mid-May.
A probe has been ordered into the leaking of SMS messages over an apparent secret love affair between a married Western Cape provincial minister and a journalist, the Cape Times reported on Thursday. Provincial Premier Ebrahim Rasool said there had been ”several incidents of breaches of provincial government security” in the past few weeks.
An estimated three million children in South Africa are involved in exploitative labour, a conference on the matter heard on Thursday. ”The government of South Africa estimated that 32,5% of children aged five to 14 years were working in 1999. Between 248Â 000 and three-million children are engaged in exploitative child labour in South Africa,” Dr Helene Aiello of Khulisa Management Services told the Reducing Exploitative Child Labour in South Africa conference in Boksburg.