Business confidence is at a delicate stage, with the business confidence index virtually unchanged, dropping from 127,5 in March to 127,2 in April, the South African Chamber of Business (Sacob) said on Thursday. ”The status of business confidence reflects a delicate balance at present,” Sacob said.
The quest for seats on the United Nations Security Council is not to divert South Africa and Nigeria from African challenges, South African Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said on Thursday in Pretoria. Pahad was addressing the special implementation committee on binational commission matters between the two countries.
Johannesburg-listed mobile operator MTN Group said on Thursday that while aiming to cautiously expand across the developing markets, its plans to enter Iran remained suspended until after the general elections in that country. MTN — currently seeking to gain a 100% holding in Dutch-based Celtel International — said it was prepared to acquire a 49% stake in Iran’s new mobile operator.
The fashion-conscious owner of a burgled clothes shop said on Wednesday he helped to catch the man who robbed him after spotting the thief dressed in a criminally uncouth mix of stolen trousers and tops. "I couldn’t believe that this guy was wearing all the pinched stuff," said Neil Primett, who owns the Planet Clothing store in Bedford.
Bidding for Pope Benedict XVI’s old Volkswagen, on offer on eBay Germany, topped €100 000 (R772 000) on Thursday, 10 times the price the current owner paid for it. A few hours before the sale was set to close, the page on the internet auction website had registered 6,3-million hits.
Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio has called morning rush-hour traffic on a heavily used highway leading into Lisbon a "daily tragedy" after he braved the motorway without his usual police escort, reports said on Thursday. It took the president 40 minutes to travel just 13km on the IC19 highway.
Thousands of Jews and other people from around the world gathered in southern Poland on Thursday to march through the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in memory of the millions who died in the Holocaust. Under a grey sky and occasional hisses of rainfall, the crowd made its way to the main camp at Auschwitz.
It has all the ingredients of a fast-moving thriller. A spy who had just come in from the cold, well, London actually. A deep throat who gave him the records of the mobile phone his target was using. A plot hatched to plant drugs on the target’s scooter. A plan to hire a prostitute who would claim she had been raped by him.
Scientists in the United States have discovered a mass graveyard of feathered dinosaurs with teeth that hint at vegetarian appetites. The excavation of fossil remains could provide clues about how meat-eating members of the velociraptor family — the predators in Jurassic Park — evolved into herbivores.
Africa lacks journalists able to report on science without distortion and misinformation, according to a Science and Development Network report. At a meeting on biotechnology and biosafety in Uganda, scientists said media ignorance is to blame for Africans lacking accurate information on new opportunities and benefits.