Arcelor, the pan-European steel group, on Friday torpedoed Mittal’s latest hostile takeover bid by buying Russia’s Severstal in an agreed €13-billion deal designed to create an ”unrivalled global champion” out of reach of its Indian-owned predator.
A powerful earthquake rocked Indonesia’s Central Java province early on Saturday, flattening buildings and killing at least 309 people, hospitals and officials said. Scores of other people were injured. The 6,2-magnitude quake also triggered heightened activity in the region’s deadly Mount Merapi volcano, which has been spewing out clouds of hot ash, gas and lava.
United States-based company LifeGem has developed a way to turn the remains of your loved one into a diamond in about 24 weeks. It does this by extracting carbon from the ashes of the body, subjecting it to intense heat to create graphite and then placing it in a special diamond press which replicates the awesome forces deep within the Earth.
The South African economy has shown resilience by withstanding a 144c petrol price increase over the past two years, but production costs threaten a benign outlook, figures released recentl show. Statistics South Africa reported that inflation excluding mortgage rates rose 3,7% in April. This was slightly below forecast.
The battle for control of Cape Town goes to the streets of Tafelsig — a poor coloured suburb of Mitchells Plain on the Cape Flats — in less than a fortnight in what is becoming a contest between mayor Helen Zille and the Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille. Although the two are not candidates in the June 7 municipal by-election, both parties are investing heavily in the election.
The SABC is fumbling nervously through its Unauthorised documentary series, which critics charge is anything but "unauthorised". Following last week’s controversial last-minute canning of the documentary on President Thabo Mbeki, sources have told the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> that SABC management has interfered with other films in the series.
A Muslim-owned travel agency is suing an Old Mutual employee after forensic investigators traced an e-mail accusing the agency of exploiting the Muslim hajj pilgrimage to her computer. The e-mail, which accused Cape Town-based Sure Flywell Travel of amassing a net profit of R10-million on air-ticket sales alone during last year’s hajj, has shaken the Muslim community.
Fired North West agriculture department head Emily Mogajane has won her court battle against North West Premier Edna Molewa. Ruling in the Mafikeng High Court last week, Judge Ronald Hendricks ordered that Mogajane’s dismissal from the province’s agriculture department be set aside. Molewa fired Mogajane in March.
It’s a pity that Dubya doesn’t have people in his employ who are nearly as efficient at invasions as the Dodge division of DaimlerChrysler. After 15 hours of flying, the South African contingent would have been forgiven for wondering just where on the planet we were for the international launch of the Dodge Caliber, writes Sukasha Singh.
The past 10 years of his life had savaged the dilapidated novelist. His cheeks, once chubby and flushed, were flaking onion-skin drawn tight over a mangrove swamp of burst blood vessels; and his eyes — little round beads that had blinked quizzically from the back covers of 500-million paperbacks — were useless egg-whites swimming in two oily pans.