President Thabo Mbeki told university vice-chancellors of his deep dissatisfaction with tertiary education and demanded a ”short-term emergency plan” to remedy its failure to meet the country’s ”social and economic” needs. The message is conveyed in a document co-written by Mbeki, Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin and Minister of Science and Technology Mosibudi Mangena.
The 250-million-year-old galesaurus on Annelise Crean’s workbench at the South African Museum is a superbly prepared fossil, its tracery of delicate off-white bones standing out from a matrix of fine grey sandstone. But where the dusty eye sockets should be, there is a surprise: the creature has protuberant, glistening and definitely not prehistoric brown eyeballs.
The nonprofit Mozilla Foundation that organises the development of the Firefox Web browser said on Wednesday it has formed a corporate subsidiary, not to make money but to better focus its activities. Mozilla will work mainly on developing and delivering free software products such as the Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail program.
Olympic champion Yelena Isinbayeva is the undisputed queen of women’s pole vault and this season became the first female to go over five metres. The 23-year-old from Volgograd has set her targets even higher and now plans on jumping 5,50m.
The European Union warned Iran on Tuesday that it would end two years of negotiations over nuclear projects if Tehran fulfils threats to end its freeze on the enrichment of uranium. A United States intelligence estimate on Iran concluded that it could be 10 years before Tehran had sufficient material to arm a nuclear warhead.
The collapse of a huge ice shelf in Antarctica in 2002 has no precedent in the past 11 000 years, according to a study to be published on Thursday that points the finger at global warming. Measuring about 3 250 square kilometres in area, the Larsen B iceshelf broke away from the eastern Antarctic Peninsula in 2002, eventually disintegrating into giant icebergs.
The symbols of Ukraine’s orange revolution last year have been registered as profitable trademarks in the name of the eldest son of the revolution’s leader, Viktor Yushchenko. Questions are now being asked as to how much money these highly popular logos have generated for the Yushchenko family.
Who would have thought it? France’s new Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, dismissed two months ago as an aloof, unelected and often incomprehensible aristocrat, began his brief summer holiday on Tuesday with his popularity soaring and newspaper editorials singing his praises.
In life, Marlon Brando was an Oscar-winning actor and something of an eccentric. In death, he is about to become a published author. A pirate adventure story he co-wrote 30 years ago has been turned into a novel, and it is claimed the work offers insights into the Hollywood star’s tumultuous life.
Passengers who survived a plane crash on an Air France jet headed for Toronto have described their panic and confusion on Wednesday morning as the plane burst into flames after skidding off the runway into a ravine. All 297 passengers survived the crash on Tuesday night.