After rallying to another record high on Monday, the JSE drifted weaker at the opening on Tuesday, with petrochemicals group Sasol coming off following an easing in the oil price. Early volumes were light. By 9.22am, the all share index shed 0,14%. Resources retreated 0,5%, with the gold and platinum mining indices losing 1,02% and 0,59% respectively.
A technical blunder has landed North West agriculture MEC Dleleni Duma with an acquittal on a charge of drunken or reckless driving, The Citizen newspaper reported on Tuesday. It said Potchefstroom magistrate Peter Jikkels said on Monday the state had ”blundered” with particulars on the charge sheet.
Five members of the medical profession will appear in the Durban Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday on charges related to trading in human kidneys, media reports said. Prominent professors who specialise in transplant operations are believed to be among the five.
A new Broadway musical about John Lennon has been panned by everyone — apart from his widow, Yoko Ono, who was closely involved in the production. ”I think he would be jumping up and down,” said Ono (72), ”I think he would have loved it.” But with virtual unanimity the critics disagreed.
Five brothers who were struggling to keep their dry, dusty sheep farm going became millionaires overnight after uranium was discovered on their land and they were paid R20-million for the mining rights. Just a few months ago the five Ngondo brothers were hard put to meet the mortgage payments after drought claimed 100 of their sheep.
At least six of the 121 people killed on Sunday in Greece’s worst air disaster were alive when the jetliner plunged into a mountain outside Athens, autopsies revealed on Monday night. The Helios Airways Boeing 737 crashed into mountains near Athens, killing all 115 passengers and six crew on a flight from Larnaca to Prague with a stop in Athens.
At the heavy steel gates to Neve Dekalim, a few voices among the crowd of angry young religious Jews were shouting ”Nazis” and ”Gestapo” at the ranks of Israeli police massing on Monday on the road beyond. The chants disquieted others who favoured singing psalms and heartfelt appeals to Jews not to expel Jews.
Volunteers in St Francis Bay, a fishing town about 100km south of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, are making a big difference to their natural environment by turning their concerns into action. A heritage centre was recently set up by residents to educate people, especially children, about protecting marine life.
The government’s Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) paid out more than R2,1-billion last year to 500Â 000 unemployed people, but has little grasp of the skills challenges the country faces. The now self-funding UIF uses a database to match the skills of unemployed people with those of vacancies but does little or no follow-up.
"You know what Hillbrow and Yeoville are like," says a resident of Katlehong, glibly summarising the moral character of places he must have visited about twice in the past decade: "Full of criminals." But naturally: mainstream Jozi circles — the Melville café, the Soweto shebeen — have turned both names into abuses, conjoining them to a list of African cities similarly revered.