The recent 50 basis point rate increase in South Africa has had mixed responses across the board, but none more so than among foreigners, who have seemingly started voting with their feet. Brait economist Colen Garrow says non-residents have been sellers of equities for four consecutive days now, and this needs to be monitored.
The South African government on Monday demanded a greater say over the way millions in United States HIV/Aids funding is spent in the country, arguing that giving the money directly to local programmes created a coordination problem. The Bush administration has pledged -billion to combat HIV/Aids over five years in 15 of the world’s worst-hit countries.
A new JavaScript worm has been identified that exploits an unpatched vulnerability in Yahoo! web mail. The worm, JS.Yamanner@m, spreads from person to person when the user opens an e-mail that is originally sent by the worm. The worm then sends itself to the user’s contacts that also use Yahoo! Mail.
The number of PCs in use in South Africa will pass the five-million mark for the first time this year, according to a new study released on Tuesday. Booming sales in PCs means not only more people than ever before are using new PCs, but also that PCs already in the field will remain in use for a longer period.
Gyorgy Ligeti, the Hungarian-born musical pioneer whose use of texture and density marked him out as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, died in Vienna on Monday after a long illness. He was 83. Although sometimes hailed as the spiritual heir to Bartok, Ligeti’s work encompassed everything from Romanian folk music to avant garde, electronic compositions.
An autopsy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi concluded that he survived for nearly an hour after the house he was in was targeted by a United States air strike on Wednesday, but died from ”massive internal injuries” caused by the shock wave from the blast.
South Africa this week marks the 30th anniversary of a watershed in its anti-apartheid struggle when hundreds of children in Soweto protesting the forced teaching of Afrikaans died in a brutal police crackdown. The June 16 youth protest began in the black township of Soweto, spreading like wildfire across the country and marking a turning point in the liberation movement.
Billionaire basketball team owner Mark Cuban was a no-show, but the head of the United Nations Children’s Fund made it and pop star Prince rounded off the evening by throwing a guitar over his head. The occasion was the 10th annual Webby awards — the self-proclaimed Oscars of the internet — which drew a large and varied group of winners from across the cyberspace world.
There is likely to be a major sell-off of the JSE over the next few months, says Mark Wurr, head of trading at brokerage firm Global Trader. While most of this will be foreigners taking profits in a market that ramped up more than 70% in a year, the market will settle down again once all the froth is out, providing buying opportunities later in the year.
Whether you walk by or speed past in your car with the windows rolled up, the overwhelming stench from the Marie Louise landfill in Soweto will get to you. The combination of the smell from the landfill and the dust from the nearby mine dumps means that residents from Meadowlands Zone 11, parts of Dobsonville and the Bramfischerville settlement are plagued by dust, smells and fears for their health.