Gas supply in the Gauteng area is expected to return to normal over the next few days after a series of mishaps that has throttled supply since the onset of an early winter in May. Afrox, the market leader in bottled gas, says it has supplied an additional 50 000 9kg bottles to alleviate the shortage.
Young people were often at the forefront of the struggle to liberate South Africa and 30 years on they are still leading the way, producing solutions to age-old problems that have long vexed their elders. The South African Bureau of Standards Young Design Achievers Awards celebrates youngsters with big visions and the tenacity to bring their ingenious ideas to fruition.
Chad and Sudan’s frosty relations are expected to plumb new lows following Chadian Foreign Minister Ahmat Allami’s statement that Sudan’s role in its conflict be investigated by the United Nations Security Council. The security council is no stranger to the conflict in Sudan.
Is this the best of times for South African literature? South Africans are buying more South African books. There are high-profile literary awards (leave aside, for now, the weak representation of poetry), successful local literature promotions, popular magazines commissioning new work by writers and a robust literary festival circuit.
The Palestinian foreign minister returned to the Gaza Strip on Wednesday from a trip abroad with an estimated -million packed in 12 separate suitcases, according to officials. Mahmoud Zahar, a member of Hamas, declared the amount he was carrying to Egyptian officials at the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.
A preliminary investigation by law firm Cheadle, Thompson and Haysom into the appointment of project managers on the N2 Gateway housing project in Cape Town has found no evidence of direct political interference or corruption.The investigation found that at worst there was a ”lack of clarity” about the roles of various panels and committees involved in the project.
Months before an air strike killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, United States military commanders and intelligence officers in Iraq tried to persuade the office of the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and the White House to ”degrade” his inflated image; they resisted, ultimately for ”domestic political reasons”, as a military source told me.
The Afghanistan province being patrolled by British troops will produce at least a third of the world’s heroin this year, according to drug experts who are forecasting a record harvest that will be an embarrassment for the Western-funded war on narcotics. British officials are bracing themselves for the result of an annual United Nations poppy survey.
A day of panic selling in the world’s financial markets on Tuesday knocked off the price of a barrel of oil, provided the sharpest one-day fall in gold for 13 years. Amid growing fears that rising global interest rates could bring a halt to the boom in asset prices of recent years, the toughest day for Japan’s Nikkei index since the 9/11 terrorist attacks was followed by extreme nervousness in European markets.
The unemployment rate in the United Kingdom hit its highest level in three and a half years in April, official data showed recently, while earnings growth remained subdued. The Office for National Statistics said unemployment for the three months leading up to April rose from 5,1% to 5,3%, its highest since September 2002.