Vodacom will announce the launch date of its third generation (3G) network at the Sandton convention centre on November 9. Vodacom will also, for the first time, run a public 3G demonstration at a location outside its offices at Vodaworld. The event will begin with a series of workshops including panel discussions on topics including WiFi, broadband, 3G technology, mobile marketing and messaging.
The chief executive of ThisDay newspaper, Graeme King, has resigned from the company. In a joint statement released on Tuesday King said he hoped the newspaper would become a ”leading voice in the market”. King led the company through the critical launch phase of the national daily newspaper last year.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair held talks in Sudan on Wednesday to pressure the country’s leaders into taking action over the humanitarian crisis in war-torn Darfur. Blair, who underwent an operation to correct a heart flutter only five days earlier, was greeted at the presidential palace in Khartoum by Vice President Ali Osman Taha.
Blair seeks pledge from Sudan
The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria awarded Uganda a new grant of -million last Friday to battle the disease.
The JSE Securities Exchange South Africa was flat in noon trade on Wednesday, having surrendered early gains due to profit taking and weakness in European markets. Volumes were good, despite a lack of fresh news to draw players into the market.
The services of the black economic empowerment company formed between financial services group Sanlam and a union consortium won’t be confined to the present members of the consortium, the parties said on Wednesday. "We see this as an entry point into a huge market — a huge market that is potentially available …and not insured," said one Sanlam executive.
The Eastern Cape education department has overspent its budget by more than R600-million, the province’s education minister Mkhangeli Matomela told MPs on Tuesday. Briefing Parliament’s education select committee, he warned the overspending would lead, among other things, to cutting the number of schools the region had planned to build this year.
A former Maoist radical has launched Beijing’s first bunny bar, but China’s playboy revolution is already foundering. In the 70s CK Yu, the son of a Taiwanese general, was running a bookshop in California selling the works of Mao Zedong. Yu’s bar, Buck and Bunny, opened last Friday in Sanlitun, the capital’s diplomatic district.
With due pomp and ceremony the Royal Navy handed over the submarine HMS Upholder to the Canadians at the weekend. The vessel was renamed HMCS Chicoutimi — after the city on the edge of Quebec’s vast northern wilds — and the maple leaf flag was hoisted. Then after its final preparations, it began to chug towards Nova Scotia.
The hour-long drive up route 93 from Boston to Derry in New Hampshire (population 34 021) is punctuated by banners calling on people to ”support the troops” and others saying ”bring the troops home”. It is also framed by a New England fall.