The London Zoo unveiled a new exhibition on Thursday — eight humans prowling around wearing little more than fig leaves to cover their modesty. <i>The Human Zoo</i> is intended to show the basic nature of human beings as they frolic throughout the August bank holiday weekend.
A random police check in the early hours of Friday in a Lisbon neighbourhood known for its nightlife found 90% of drivers had a blood-alcohol level above the legal limit. Of the 653 drivers that police stopped between 2.30am and 7.30am, 585 had a blood-alcohol level above 0,5g per litre of blood, police said in a statement.
Mobile operator Vodacom has announced an unprecedented cut in call rates of up to 50% during the peak call time of 5pm to 8pm on weekdays. Dubbed Vodacom’s "Happy Hours", the new tariff, to be launched on Sunday, will see a standard on-network call rate of R1,49 per minute for pre-paid and contract customers.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (Cosatu) enthusiastic support for former deputy president Jacob Zuma went down like a lead blimp at this week’s Cape Town launch of the jobs coalition touted as a United Democratic Front-style grassroots movement.
It is really a bit of minnow, this fossil fish of which a team of British and South African scientists have now found a dozen or so examples, embedded in 450-million year old Ordovician shale in a roadside quarry in the Cederberg. Still, this fish, has put the Cederberg ”Soom” fossil site firmly on the map.
A racing pigeon belonging to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II has been missing for more than a month ahead of a big race, a spokesperson said on Friday. Pigeon-fanciers feared the young bird may be flocking about with common pigeons — or, worse, have been eaten by a sparrowhawk.
Burundi’s new President, Pierre Nkurunziza, was sworn in Bujumbura on Friday as the country’s first elected leader after 12 years of war at a ceremony attended by several other African heads of state. The swearing-in also marked the end of an extended four-year transitional period that ushered in democratic rule in Burundi.
Homeopathic treatment is no more effective than a placebo, the dummy substance used in medical trials, according to a study appearing in Saturday’s issue of The Lancet, the British medical weekly. That is the conclusion of a team of doctors in Britain and Switzerland, who reviewed a mountain of published evidence.
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=zuma_report"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/243078/zuma.jpg" align=left border=0></a>President Thabo Mbeki has bluntly given his support to a Congress of South African Trade Union campaign to protect former deputy president Jacob Zuma, and pledged on Friday to unite "the entirely of our movement in a determined offensive" to defeat any conspiracy to discredit him.
Oil prices slipped on Friday, a day after its record-setting session, as Hurricane Katrina spared refineries in the Gulf of Mexico and made landfall on Florida’s coast, easing fears of supply disruptions for the time being. However, the world’s limited excess capacity to offset any unscheduled outages continues to be at the pricing forefront.