A rare Chinese tiger born in a zoo in China and sent to South Africa to be trained for a life in the wild has died, threatening a wildlife protection programme, an animal rights group said on Tuesday. Hope, a four-year-old male, died of pneumonia and heart failure on Saturday at the Laohu Valley Reserve in South Africa.
Oil futures held above a barrel on Tuesday amid lingering global supply concerns despite resumed crude flows from Ecuador and Nigeria. The rise came amid expectations that Wednesday’s United States petroleum inventories will show declines in both crude and gasoline stocks with little indication that high prices are slowing demand.
South Africa’s Department of Minerals and Energy on Tuesday announced that it has short-listed five parties — out of 11 applicants — for new peaking-power generation. The five applicants short-listed are the AES Consortium, the Inkanyezi Consortium, the International Power Consortium, Tata-J&J Consortium and the YTL Consortium.
Billowing smoke forced the evacuation of 157 guests at Cape Town’s St George’s hotel on Tuesday morning. About a third of them had to be treated for smoke inhalation. It is suspected the fire was started by an electrical short where the main power supply from the council linked to the complex’s transformer-driven private electricity supply.
Troops hacked their way into a barricaded synagogue in the heart of biblical Israel on Tuesday as they evacuated defiant settlers from the northern West Bank after the historic pull-out of Jews from the Gaza Strip. Security forces also cleared several dozen religious students who had taken refuge inside a seminary.
A 30-year-old father was arrested in Doornkop for allegedly raping his eight-month-old daughter, Soweto police said on Tuesday. Sergeant Richard Munyai said the baby girl’s mother noticed her daughter had allegedly been raped while she was bathing her and changing her nappy on Monday night.
The culling of an estimated 20 000 pigs in the Eastern Cape started in Idutywa on Monday, after an outbreak of swine fever hit the province. At least 3 500 emerging farmers’ pigs have been affected by the virus, and strict control measures to stop the spread of the disease have been set in place.
The JSE Securities Exchange (JSE) was weaker in noon trade on Tuesday, dragged down by a stronger rand. However, dealers said that some strength could possibly be seen later in the day after the market digested better-than-expected gross domestic product data released on Tuesday morning.
When about 40 miners became trapped at eastern Ghana’s Nyanfoman-Noyem mine earlier this month, the bizarre truth is that it was seen as a normal occurrence that warranted no panic. The belief is that deaths of illegal miners are sacrifices to the gods for more gold. Illegal miners will brush aside such accidents and continue their work.
Pretty it certainly wasn’t. But it did send a tingle down the spine and had the synapses firing all over the place, didn’t it? Saturday’s win over the Wallabies in Perth saw the Springboks roll over a side that have, in the past six weeks been mauled and battered so badly that one could justifiably feel a little sorry for them.