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/ 11 January 2006
New European Union Council president Austria suffered a blow to its hopes of reviving the EU Constitution on Wednesday when Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot declared it ”dead”. After a talk with his visiting Austrian counterpart in The Hague, Bot said: ”We discussed the constitution, which for The Netherlands is dead.”
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/ 11 January 2006
Ariel Sharon’s progress since his massive brain haemorrhage has stunned doctors, but the Israeli premier still faces a long and rocky road to recovery, his chief neurosurgeon said on Wednesday. Sharon, who is being gradually awoken from a medically induced coma, is already moving ”his four limbs”.
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/ 11 January 2006
London- and South Africa-listed financial-services group Old Mutual is likely to unveil a far higher level of acceptances related to its R38-billion takeover offer for Swedish insurer Skandia than the current 64,3% after the tender offer closes at midnight on Thursday.
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/ 11 January 2006
Pro-democracy activists in Swaziland are planning mass action against the kingdom’s leader, King Mswati III, following the December arrest of 14 opposition party members on high-treason charges. Youth organisations will be called on to participate in mass action, which will take place in Swaziland and South Africa.
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/ 11 January 2006
A high-tech scanner that digitally ”strips” travellers on their way to their plane or train will go on trial for four weeks from Thursday at a major London rail station, officials said. Passengers at Paddington Station in West London will be invited to pass through the scanner before they board the Heathrow Express non-stop train service to the British capital’s main airport.
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/ 11 January 2006
South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) has requested in a letter that President Thabo Mbeki take action over what it described as ”the possible abuse of state resources” by Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. It is estimated that a holiday — described by DA MP Gareth Morgan as ”a gravy plane holiday” — to the United Arab Emirates in December cost about  000.
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/ 11 January 2006
Gold was higher in choppy and highly liquid trade on Wednesday afternoon amid a firmer euro. At 2.46pm, gold was quoted at $544,20 a troy ounce, up $1/oz from its previous close. "It has been quite a choppy and volatile day. We’ve seen extremely high levels of liquidity," a Johannesburg-based trader said.
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/ 11 January 2006
Budapest firefighters had to remove a window and a large section of wall, and use a forklift to extract a grossly overweight woman from her home, MTI news agency reported. Firefighters spent five hours dismantling the home of the middle-aged woman, who weighs in at between 200kg and 300kg.
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/ 11 January 2006
Australian police said on Wednesday that they will counter an SMS service that tips off motorists about the location of random breath testing (RBT) patrol cars by constantly shifting their location. Road Spy provides subscribers with SMSs alerting them to the locations of RBT patrols as well as radar and speed-camera traps.
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/ 11 January 2006
The African Christian Democratic Party in the Free State on Wednesday urged the African National Congress and the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco) in the province to sort out their differences. Sanco in the Free State on Tuesday said it would contest the forthcoming local government elections alone.