Sipping a tumbler of Johnnie Walker whisky as he chats with his friends in a hotel bar in Mumbai, Kunal Doshi, a smartly-dressed young solicitor, appears an unlikely warrior. But in the increasingly bitter "whisky war" being fought between the Indian industry and traditional Scottish producers, Doshi (21) has become an unknowing frontline soldier in a foreign assault on the world’s largest whisky market.
A publicity stunt in which a golf ball will be whacked into orbit from the International Space Station has met a chilly reception from scientists, who say the scheme is risky and adds to the growing problem of space junk. Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov is to take on the role of a celestial Tiger Woods under a deal between a Canadian golf club manufacturer and the cash-strapped Russian Space Agency.
In Khutsong residents enforced an election boycott by burning at least two houses belonging to known African National Congress activists. During the day residents played soccer and generally stayed away from the polls, but at night rampaging youths stoned and burnt the houses of an ANC candidate and an ANC party agent.
South Korean electronics giant Samsung will unveil its new portable music player on Sunday in a direct challenge to the now iconic iPod, one of the world’s best-selling products from United States rival Apple. Samsung’s new flash memory MP3 player, called the YP-Z5, will be released first in the United States on the home turf of its rival.
A Vietnamese court on Friday convicted former British glam rocker Gary Glitter of sexually abusing two underage Vietnamese girls and sentenced him to three years in prison. The faded 1970s pop star was found guilty of "committing obscene acts with children" — two girls aged 11 and 12 — last year in the South China Sea resort town of Vung Tau.
The South African Revenue Service (Sars) has identified a staggering R226-million diverted via suspect share transactions for the benefit of murdered mining magnate Brett Kebble. And some of the assets appear to have been moved under the name of a former Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) agent.
An e-mail circulating among academics at the University of Cape Town has fuelled the controversy around poet Antjie Krog by decribing what it calls Krog’s "close borrowing" from Wits University writer and academic Isabel Hofmeyr. The new allegation centres on a passage in Krog’s account of South Africa’s truth commission process, <i>Country of My Skull</i>.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/262374/vote-box_blue.gif" align=left>Deal-making on Cape Town’s future became reality early on Thursday evening as available results showed neither the African National Congress nor the Democratic Alliance emerging as outright winners. With less than five percent of the vote outstanding, the DA was leading with 42,45% over the African National Congress’s 37,3%.
In the year 2006, a fully functioning province in a modern, first-world country was brought to its knees by massive breakdowns in its electricity supplies. Emergency services were rendered helpless, hospitals were unable to perform life-saving surgery, other vital medical procedures had to be abandoned. Communications across the province were disrupted for more than a week.
It’s been the season for earthquakes. First Mozambique and much of Southern Africa was hit by an uncharacteristic once-in-100-years event. Then there has been the seismic activity around fuel and petrochemical giant Sasol, which saw R25-billion wiped off its market capitalisation in a five-day period.