South Africa’s producer price index (PPI) rose by 5,4% year-on-year (y/y) in March from a 5,5% y/y increase in February, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) said on Wednesday. The PPI rose 0,4% on a monthly basis after February’s monthly rise of 0,2%.
Irina, a young consultant in a Western company, loves boasting to colleagues about her trip to Argentina and showing off her tan and holiday snaps. The only thing is: she’s never been there. And this doesn’t matter, according to the man behind this novel idea for arousing envy — fake trips with real side effects.
Illusionist David Copperfield has magically escaped getting robbed. After his show at a West Palm Beach performing arts centre on Sunday, Copperfield was walking with two female assistants back to their tour bus when four teenagers pulled up in a black car and demanded the group’s belongings, according to police.
Violence by striking security guards was doing harm to the good name of the South African Trade and Allied Workers’ Union, it said on Wednesday. ”It also frustrates us, because this is a big movement and we’ve worked hard to build a particular name,” spokesperson Ronnie Mamba said. ”So when in just a few weeks all the good work goes down the drain, it’s worrying.”
Australian cricketer Shane Warne may be called to give evidence in the trial of a taxi driver charged with the murder of a teenage passenger, the Melbourne Magistrate’s Court heard on Wednesday. Rajbinder Singh Shahi (28) is charged with murdering 17-year-old Xavier Salmon by running him down with his taxi after a dispute in December last year.
Arsene Wenger revealed he had been confident Jens Lehmann would make the last-minute penalty save that has put Arsenal into the Champions League final. Wenger was dubious about whether Gael Clichy had actually fouled Villarreal striker Jose Mari for the penalty, which Juan Roman Riquelme struck almost straight at Lehmann.
United States President George Bush, facing a summer of revolt from a nation that believes fiercely in its right to affordable petrol, on Tuesday unveiled plans to try to stop a rapid rise in prices at the pump. In a speech to the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington, Bush acknowledged that the high prices were hurting ordinary Americans as the holiday season approaches.
Sitting on thin foam mattresses sprawled across a crude cement floor in drought-stricken northern Kenya, dozens of mothers nurse emaciated babies as flies hover around mosquito netting. The odours of medicine and sweat mixed with the stench of disease hang in the foetid air under the iron roof of this hospital annex.
A man believed to be al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on Tuesday showed his face publicly for the first time since the insurgency began three years ago. Dressed in black and his chest covered with ammunition pouches, he made an appeal to Iraqi Sunnis to support his fight against the United States-led coalition and its Iraqi supporters.
Gathered on the seafront outside the Al Capone cafe on Tuesday, a weary looking knot of men stared silently at the 600cm-wide crater that had appeared on the cobbled street, as if willing it to disappear. All around lay shards of glass, scraps of clothing and discarded rubber flip-flops. ”It was like a war,” said one of the men, Hani Bivars, unable to tear his gaze from the crater.