![]()
Raymond Domenech is playing down France’s past superiority over their World Cup semifinal opponents Portugal, saying it will count for nothing when the whistle blows in Munich on Wednesday. Les Bleus have won all four of their clashes with Portugal, the most significant coming at Euro 2000 when they ran out 2-1 extra time winners in a fractious semifinal en route to taking the title.
Two of the three former apartheid spies who were released from a Zimbabwean prison at the weekend have been reunited with their families, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Sunday. Michael Smith, Kevin Woods and Philip Conjwayo were jailed for life for murder and sabotage in 1988. They were pardoned by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.
Israel threatened to target the Hamas political leadership in the Gaza Strip with detention or worse on Sunday as diplomatic efforts to negotiate the release of a soldier held by Palestinian militias stalled. An Israeli air strike destroyed the office of the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, in the early hours, without causing injury.
The past few weeks have been seriously troubling for those who still consider the Constitution and its promises to be the most effective cement with which to hold this country together. If we fail to make our constitutional dreams an increasing lived reality, the long-term potential of this Constitution to hold all South Africans together may well be jeopardised.
Many fine journalists have quit the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). Many have left for greener pastures. But many have quit in disgust after becoming entangled in the labyrinthine (some might say Machiavellian) politics of the public broadcaster.
The government is developing an ambitious plan for every household in the country to use gas for its cooking and heating needs. The plan, which includes regulating the price of gas, foresees the development of special import facilities at the country’s harbours to ship in vast quantities of liquid petroleum gas from gas-rich countries such as Algeria.
A variety of ailments can affect people with albinism, an inherited genetic condition characterised by the absence of melanin in skin, eyes and hair. But the challenges confronting albinos do not end there: all too often, they are also shunned and discriminated against, in Southern Africa and elsewhere.
Fed up with England’s weather and traffic, the new CEO for Virgin Mobile in South Africa, Sajeed Sacranie, decided three years ago to return to the continent of his birth. Not to Malawi where he was born, but to Johannesburg. Sacranie says help is on the way for consumers who are fed up with South Africa’s existing cellphone operators.
The Nigerian government’s handover of the hotly contested Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon two weeks ago concludes a quarrelsome chapter in the region’s history. The handover, brokered by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, followed a World Court ruling in favour of the territory being returned to Cameroon.
Measured by the South African Advertising Research Foundation’s readership figures, <i>Getaway</i> magazine is the biggest title in the outdoor travel niche with a 480 000 All Media Product Services reading. But, measured by circulation, <i>Weg</i> — Naspers’s Afrikaans imitator — has just under 100 000 sales, beating <i>Getaway</i> by more than 15 000.