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/ 24 November 2004
The Cape High Court on Wednesday rejected alleged coup plotter Mark Thatcher’s bid to quash a planned questioning session by Equatorial Guinea prosecutors. His legal team had argued that the questioning, scheduled to take place before a Cape Town magistrate on Friday, violated Thatcher’s constitutional rights to silence and against self-incrimination.
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/ 24 November 2004
From December 1, it will be possible for some Telkom users to send and receive SMS messages from their landlines. In addition to the spoken message that already can be received through a landline, where a text message is converted into a computer voice, Telkom will offer a service that will enable customers to send and receive text messages. This service will only be available for postpaid users who subscribe to Telkom’s Identical service.
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/ 24 November 2004
The world’s leading IT company, Microsoft, said on Tuesday that it will be lobbying the Bangladesh government to crack down on piracy of its programmes. A pirated copy of a Microsoft programme can be bought for less than a dollar in Bangladesh, where Microsoft has just opened its first office.
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/ 24 November 2004
The next decade will see nations scrambling to build outposts on the moon with each adapting different strategies to use it as a base to explore space, according to scientists attending a conference on lunar exploration. The United States welcomes competition while the Europeans and other national space programs favour a cooperative robotic village lunar base, they said.
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/ 24 November 2004
Nazi war physician Josef Mengele’s last thoughts and views have come to light, including the fact that he did not repent the atrocities he committed, in letters and diary notes recovered from police archives and published on Tuesday in Brazil.
Contents of 85 documents were translated from German to Portugese and have now been published in an exclusive by the Brazilian newspaper Folha.
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/ 24 November 2004
A new partner has been found for Max the gorilla’s ”widow”, Lisa, who has been single since the death of her famous mate in May. Makoko — on permanent loan from the Munster Zoo in Germany — was expected to arrive in South Africa on Friday, Johannesburg Zoo spokesperson Elmarie Loubser said on Wednesday.
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/ 24 November 2004
South African power utility Eskom is experiencing higher-than-expected demand for energy, Matimba Power Station manager Christo van Niekerk said this week. Residential demand for electricity is increasing rapidly due to the increase in the electrification of housing. However, the increase in demand is unlikely to result in power rationing.
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/ 24 November 2004
South Africa’s CPIX inflation (headline inflation excluding mortgage costs) was up 4,2% year-on-year (y/y) for metro and other areas in October compared with 3,7% y/y in September and August, 4,2% y/y in July, 5,0% y/y in June and 4,4% y/y in May, April and March, 4,8% y/y in February, and 4,2% y/y in January, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) said on Wednesday.
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/ 24 November 2004
French employees of a General Electric branch that makes medical equipment, tired of struggling with company e-mails, manuals and meetings in English, took their fight to court on Tuesday — the latest flare-up in the French language’s struggle to maintain linguistic pre-eminence, at least at home. The employees have invoked the 1994 Toubon Law. that secifies French be used in business and on the airwaves.
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/ 24 November 2004
Former anti-apartheid activist Valli Moosa of South Africa was elected the new president of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) on Wednesday. IUCN is deemed the world’s largest conservation network. Moosa, (47) born in Johannesburg, has served on the United Nations Environment Programme governing council, the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment, and the South African Business Trust.