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/ 30 December 2004
Graham Thorpe shared in two century partnerships to reach his 16th century and bat South Africa out of contention on the fourth day of the second Test at Kingsmead on Wednesday. At close of play, South Africa, chasing a target of 378 to win, had 21 for one, after England declared their second innings on 570 for seven.
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/ 29 December 2004
Tsunami survivors sobbed and broke down when they met their families at Johannesburg International airport on Wednesday after arriving on a mercy flight from Phuket, Thailand — and praised two young South Africans who coordinated the rescue effort. Meanwhile, the number of people killed in Sunday’s earthquake and tsunamis neared 81Â 000.
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/ 29 December 2004
Flights packed with ready-made meals, medicines and doctors were on Wednesday arriving in countries ravaged by the tsunami in the Indian Ocean which has left almost 70 000 people, half of them children, dead.
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/ 29 December 2004
The 2004 matric class has achieved a pass rate of more than 70% for the third year in a row, says Education Minister Naledi Pandor. The official results in eight provinces were released during a media briefing at Parliament, but the results in Mpumalanga have been withheld because some are under investigation.
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/ 29 December 2004
The retail price of petrol will decrease by up to 52 cents per litre from next week Wednesday, the Department of Minerals and Energy has announced in a statement. The department said on Wednesday the retail price of 97 Octane unleaded petrol will decrease by 52 cents and the wholesale price of diesel with 0,05% sulphur by 39 cents.
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/ 29 December 2004
A charity pop single raising money for African relief has done a better job than the church in spreading the Christmas message, a Church of England bishop admitted on Thursday. Band Aid, the collective of pop stars gathered together by Bob Geldof, have done what organised religion ”was not able to or did not want to carry out”, said the bishop.
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/ 29 December 2004
Two Israeli grandmothers, one 78 and the other 60, were arrested after scrapping with a grocer and his elderly mother in a bungled robbery attempt, the Maariv newspaper said on Sunday. The grannies were spotted on closed-circuit television cameras making two sweeps around the area in Lod, near Tel Aviv.
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/ 29 December 2004
The City of Cape Town is set to impose stricter water restrictions on residents, effective from New Year’s Day, but has stopped short of moving to level-three restrictions, which would have seen the use of hosepipes for watering gardens banned completely.
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/ 29 December 2004
The Vatican secretly issued instructions to the Catholic church in France not to return Jewish children to their families after the second world war, it emerged on Tuesday. The children were entrusted to the church’s care to save them from the death camps.
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/ 29 December 2004
The first much-needed supplies — shelter, medicine, food and water — together with teams of relief workers began to reach the disaster region to offer help to the survivors. But aid experts warned that without efficient coordination — most importantly, a firm lead from the United Nations — many more lives are bound to be lost in the aftermath of the earthquake.