Defending champion Stephane Peterhansel, driving a Mitsubishi, won the seventh stage of the Dakar Rally on Thursday to storm to the top of the overall standings. The Frenchman clocked 8 hours, 21 minutes and 57 seconds over the 660km stage from Zouerat to Tichit to clinch his second stage win this year, having also been victorious on Wednesday.
The number of people killed in the Indian Ocean quake and tsunamis coastlines on December 26 shot up past 165 000 on Friday as Indonesia confirmed nearly 20 000 more deaths. The number of South Africans unaccounted for following the tsunami has dropped to 474.
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Guinea-Bissau has been hit by an unseasonal invasion of desert locusts that threatens to damage the small West African country’s cashew-nut trees that are currently in flower. Exports of cashew nuts are the main source of foreign exchange for this former Portuguese colony.
An Israeli settler arrested at London’s Heathrow airport with a loaded handgun in his luggage was acquitted on Thursday of possessing a dangerous article. A jury at Isleworth Crown Court in west London accepted Benjamin Lehman’s claim that he had forgotten the gun was in his backpack.
West Africa’s central bank enrolled town criers, United Nations peacekeepers and even desert pilots as it pulled out all the stops for an unprecedented, 10-week campaign to swap old banknotes for new that ended last week. The Central Bank of the States of West Africa hailed the campaign as a triumph.
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.