Michelangelo’s David had centuries of gunk picked out of every nook and cranny of his perfect marble body last year in honour of his 500th birthday. But it seems the statue will be dirty again soon if it is not protected from the millions of visitors who traipse past it every year. Experts are considering blasting air from behind the 5m-high statue at the crowds of admirers.
Neither South Africa nor Sudan has yet been able to establish societies acceptable to all their people, South African President Thabo Mbeki has told Sudan’s National Assembly. Mbeki was in Sudan after attending the signing of a peace deal between the Khartoum government and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement in Kenya.
Spot gold has broken through the key $430 a troy ounce level in a very decisive fashion and the risk in the next few days and during the first part of January is for additional losses, analysts for investment bank JP Morgan wrote in a technical note on Tuesday. At 8.15am, gold was quoted at $429,38/oz.
A team of volunteers from the South African humanitarian organisation Global Relief was among the first relief workers to reach Meulaboh, on Indonesia’s island of Sumatra, one of the regions most devastated by last week’s tsunamis. More than half of Meulaboh’s 80 000 residents are estimated to have perished in the disaster.
The world’s biggest and most difficult victim-identification operation has started. While corpses are usually disposed of in days, or weeks in the case of murder investigations, the complexity and scale of the tsunami disaster is likely to mean that thousands of cadavers will have to be kept on ice for months.
It took just 10 minutes for Judge Wilfred Thring to rule that Mikro Primary’s school governing body (SGB) had the right to make its own decisions about language policy, and that the Western Cape minister of education, Cameron Dugmore, was wrong to force the school to accommodate English-speaking learners.
"Luckily Christmas is over for this year, but it’s never too late to send Santa a letter telling him what you like. Be very, very afraid as you read the list of what online internet users have been asking Santa to give them. Yes, there’s a little bit of adult material lurking here. No, don’t thank me, it’s the least I could do, really." Ian Fraser goes the extra online mile.
Which four Southern Africa countries held elections this year? Who won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize? Who provides the donkey’s voice in the film <i>Shrek</i>? Name the Jewish architect of Polish extraction who won the bid to design a memorial for New York’s Twin Towers. How many of the year’s events can you recall? Put yourself to the test …
It is hard not to conclude that 2004 has been a wasted year. Little has changed – and certainly not for the better. Iraq continues to be a bloody mess – but George W Bush has been returned to power. Robert Mugabe still holds power in Zimbabwe. In South Africa, the future of the Deputy President Jacob Zuma remains clouded. Time passes, nothing changes, and the reality again seeps in.
Liverpool went fifth in the Premier League with a 2-1 win away to relegation-threatened Norwich on Monday. Norwich, meanwhile, returned to the bottom three. Blackburn ensured Charlton suffered a second straight defeat with a 1-0 victory at Ewood Park, and Crystal Palace scored a 2-1 win at home to Aston Villa.