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/ 10 January 2005
The South African Red Cross Society on Monday handed a R4-million cheque to the government’s interministerial committee coordinating the country’s relief efforts after the December 26 Indian Ocean tsunami. Ten South Africans have been confirmed dead, all in Thailand, and 269 are still unaccounted for.
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/ 10 January 2005
South African banking group FirstRand reiterated on Monday that it will consider any takeover offers from foreign banks but declined to comment on reports that it was in talks with United Kingdom emerging-market specialist banker Standard Chartered. The news helped the rand to firm on Monday.
Barclays/Absa deal approval awaited
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/ 10 January 2005
Moves by the major United States airlines to slash prices made headlines over the past week, but a potential fare war is just one of a multitude of pressures facing the industry. Hefty fuel costs, challenging labour negotiations and mounting pension obligations add up to far bigger worries for airlines, especially the so-called legacy carriers — Delta Air Lines, United, American, Northwest Airlines, Continental Airlines and US Airways Group.
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/ 10 January 2005
Aid to 45 small island states, home to the people most vulnerable to climate change and natural disasters, has fallen by more than half in eight years, a United Nations conference will be told on Monday. The islands are meeting in Mauritius this week to plead for the help they say they need to survive.
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/ 10 January 2005
<i>The Citizen</i> newspaper’s front-page picture on Monday showed a crowd of people fleeing a large wave. The newspaper said the photograph had been taken by an amateur photographer in Sri Lanka. A five-minute internet search yielded the same photograph, taken in China in October 2002, of the annual flooding of the Qiantang river.
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/ 10 January 2005
KwaZulu-Natal minister of agriculture Lindumusa Ndabandana and five others who had to be rescued from the Drakensberg mountains after their helicopter made an emergency landing on Saturday were found unharmed, his department said on Monday. A doctor reported that although the six were found depressed, tired and hungry, they are doing well.
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/ 10 January 2005
Library officials in two southern Mississippi counties have banned Jon Stewart’s best-selling America (The Book) over the satirical textbook’s nude depictions of the nine United States Supreme Court justices. ”We’re not an adult bookstore,” said Robert Willits, director of the Jackson-George Regional Library System.
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/ 10 January 2005
The family of a newborn baby who last week became the poster child for China’s one-child policy has turned down a number of lucrative advertising contracts for diapers and milk formula, state media said on Monday. Zhang Yichi was declared China’s 1,3-billionth citizen when he was born to a huge media blitz in a Beijing hospital on Thursday.
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/ 10 January 2005
Cambodian authorities have taken a strong step towards making the red-light district of the northern tourist town of Siem Reap more anonymous — by literally banning red lights, a police official said on Monday. The action was taken a few days ago as part of a concerted crackdown on thriving prostitution in the town.
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/ 10 January 2005
Security forces deployed on Monday on the streets of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) capital to quell demonstrators who burned tires to protest a recent government announcement delaying upcoming elections nationwide. Residents and students set tyres ablaze in several poor, crowded neighbourhoods near Kinshasa’s airport.