The sign on the toilet brush says it best: ”Do not use for personal hygiene.” That admonition was the winner of an anti-lawsuit group’s contest for the wackiest consumer warning label of the year. The contest’s goal is ”to reveal how lawsuits, and concern about lawsuits, have created a need for common-sense warnings on products”.
The African Union has agreed in principle to deploy a peace support mission in the troubled Horn of Africa state of Somalia, which is trying to emerge from 13 years of anarchy, the AU said in a statement on Thursday. The mission will be the first multinational force in Somalia since the end of a failed, United Nations-mandated intervention in 1995.
It is best for a family to be open about suffering from terminal diseases rather than let rumours spread like wildfire, former president Nelson Mandela said in Johannesburg on Thursday after announcing that he lost his son, Makgatho Mandela, earlier in the day to Aids.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=177494">Nelson Mandela’s son dies</a>
The positive growth experienced by the South African vehicle market in 2004 is set to continue in 2005, McCarthy Motor Holdings chairperson Brand Pretorius said on Thursday. Pretorius expects the market to grow by approximately 11% this year. Annual new-vehicle sales have steadily increased over the past five years.
It is indisputably one of the world’s more original languages. For more than half a millennium, the inhabitants of the Spanish Canary Island of La Gomera have communicated over steep slopes and isolated valleys by whistling. Now the whistle language, known as Silbo, has aroused the interest of scientists.
Chronic gambler Dennis Telford had his hand in the till. Both hands, in fact. Over the years, the 44-year-old family man took Aus-million (about R100-million) from the Adelaide trucking firm where he was company secretary. Telford, who pleaded guilty to 63 fraud charges, got hooked on horse races early in life.
The African Union is seeking to act as mediator in the conflict pitting Ugandan government troops and rebels in the north, a spokesperson said on Thursday. President Yoweri Museveni at the weekend ordered the army to resume attacks against the insurgents, after last-minute hitches scuppered a December 31 ceasefire deal.
A baby hippopotamus that survived the tsunami on the Kenyan coast has formed a strong bond with a giant, male, century-old tortoise, in an animal facility in the port city of Mombasa, officials said on Thursday. The hippo, nicknamed Owen, was swept down Sabaki River into the Indian Ocean and then forced back to shore when the tsunami struck.
Road users considered to be risk takers and repeat offenders are to be targeted by the use of technological and legal measures this year, the Department of Transport said on Thursday. Risk takers as typically males between the ages of 18 and 35 who drove luxury German sedans, the department noted.
The JSE Securities Exchange South Africa (JSE) was firmer in noon trade on Thursday after a sliding rand fuelled a rally in heavyweight resources stocks. Banks and retailers featured on the downside due to continued profit-taking on concerns about the weaker currency’s effect on consumer spending.