Composer Gyorgy Ligeti, who fled Hungary after the 1956 revolution and gained fame for his opera <i>Le Grand Macabre</i> and his work on the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s <i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>, died on Monday. He was 83. Ligeti was celebrated as one of the world’s leading 20th-century musical pioneers.
Black farmers on Monday called for unity among all farmers to address challenges facing the sector. ”Without this unity we shall continue to fight about land from a political stance instead of solving the problem from a social and economic sustainability perspective,” the president of the National African Farmers’ Union of South Africa said.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has dismissed several government officials in a bid to fight corruption, press reports said on Monday. In her inaugural speech last January, Johnson-Sirleaf had pledged to ”make corruption the number-one enemy” of her government.
The European Union gave the green light on Monday to deploy a 2 000-strong force to help secure the first multiparty elections in four decades in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) later this month. About 25-million Congolese voters will go to the polls on July 30.
The presidents of Sudan and Eritrea met on Monday for the first time in five years, setting the stage for landmark peace talks aimed at ending the simmering civil conflict in eastern Sudan. Eritrean President Assaias Afeworki and his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Beshir were expected to hold extensive talks in Khartoum.
An African woman recently asked me why I didn’t just call a local, supposedly black company, with feminist credentials to boot, to do what the traditional removal companies — Stuttafords, stuff like that — would charge me a fortune to do when I had to move house. So I did.
Ingo Preminger, a literary agent, producer of the film MASH and brother of the late filmmaker Otto Preminger, has died. He was 95. Preminger began his career as an attorney in Vienna, Austria, but fled the Nazis with his family in 1938 and moved to New York.
British play The History Boys, Alan Bennett’s wise, witty and warmhearted dissection of education in his homeland, was named best play at the 2006 Tony Awards and received six Tonys in all — more than any other production. The other top winner on Sunday night was the fast-moving musical Jersey Boys.
There are plans to appoint senior Zimbabwe military officers to the ruling Zanu-PF’s top decision-making body, the politburo, Zimbabwe’s The Standard newspaper has revealed. President Robert Mugabe appears intent on forging ahead with plans to militarise all state institutions ahead of his retirement.
The JSE was in negative territory at midday on Monday after a quiet morning’s trade. Lower commodity prices and futures-related selling ahead of Thursday’s close out were both weighing on the local bourse. By 12.05pm, the all-share index shed 1,62%. The resources and gold-mining indices tumbled 2,16% and 2,7% respectively.