After extending its phenomenal run earlier on Friday, the JSE was in the red just before noon after hitting profit-taking. The weakness was in line with European markets and softer precious metals prices. At 11.57am, the all share index was down 0,86% and 20 499,61.
A seven-year old boy shot in the chest during a third day of sustained rioting by Kurds in eastern Turkey died overnight. The child was fatally wounded on Thursday when about 10 000 angry protesters took to the streets of Diyarbakir, Turkey’s largest Kurdish-majority city, for the funerals of three people killed during the earlier clashes with police.
The United States military plans to detonate a 700-tonne explosive charge in a test called ”Divine Strake” that could send a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas. ”I don’t want to sound glib here but it is the first time in Nevada that you’ll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons,” said James Tegnelia, head of the Defence Threat Reduction Agency.
Three strong earthquakes followed by several aftershocks have jolted western Iran, killing at least 66 people and injuring at least 988, state media reported on Friday. The epicentre was in the mountainous villages south of Boroujerd and north of Doroud in western Iran.
In the highly competitive world of fast cars, sometimes the hottest picture is a snapshot showing little but the wheels. But auto enthusiasts are so anxious to see what a new model will look like that websites and magazines will pay thousands of dollars for pictures of prototypes camouflaged with patches of fabric.
Hyundai’s first full-size luxury car to be sold in South Africa, the Azera, is hard to fault. The Korean company’s new flagship is powerful, spacious, comfortable and safe. It’s also extremely quiet and delivers a very plush ride, which renders dreams of uniformed chauffeurs and bottles of champagne being consumed in the back seats quite plausible.
Since their launch four months ago, Toyota’s neat little Yaris hatches have sold like torches in Cape Town, with almost 10Â 000 South African buyers voting for the Car of the Year finalist with their wallets. Sales are likely to rise even more with the arrival of the new Yaris sedan, introduced to us last week in KwaZulu-Natal.
The first Jetta, even Volkswagen employees admit, was nothing more than a "Golf with a rucksack". After that mistake many years ago, VW has gone to great lengths to make the Jetta more than just a sedan version of the hatchback Golf and, for the most part, it has succeeded.
Former United States Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova routed the top-seeded Frenchwoman Amelie Mauresmo 6-1, 6-4 to reach the final of the WTA and ATP Nasdaq-100 Open on Thursday. Mauresmo had won their first four encounters before Kuznetsova posted a 7-6 (13-11), 6-4 win in the Dubai quarterfinals earlier this year.
South African-based railway operator Comazar was declared winner on Thursday of an international tender to administer the 1 000km Ethio-Djibouti railway for 25 years. The line runs from the Ethiopian capital to the small neighbouring country of Djibouti, at the southern entrance to the Red Sea.