Microsoft said on Thursday it is revamping its internet search operation and preparing to launch its own search engine later this year to compete directly with Google and Yahoo. The immediate change will be a ”cleaner look” for its MSN Search page that separates paid and unpaid search results and provides direct links to Microsoft’s encyclopedia service.
Kuwait’s information minister has slammed Saddam Hussein for defending Iraq’s 1990 invasion of its Gulf neighbour during his Thursday court appearance and said the former Iraqi leader should be executed. ”The criminal still believes he is the president of Iraq,” Mohammed Abul-Hassan said in Kuwait.
The New National Party on Thursday warned ”certain individuals and institutions” that they are exposing themselves, through unfounded accusations, to possible civil and criminal defamation claims. This came after two Democratic Alliance Western Cape MPLs laid charges of bribery and/or corruption against senior NNP members.
Two Democratic Alliance Western Cape MPLs on Thursday laid charges of bribery and/or corruption against members of the New National Party, including party leader and Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk. The charges relate to planning permission in exchange for donations to the NNP.
NNP calls charges ‘sewer politics’
Archaeologists have led reporters into a remote canyon to reveal an almost perfectly preserved picture of ancient life: stone pit houses, granaries and a bounty of artefacts kept secret for more than a half-century. Hundreds of sites on a private ranch offer some of the best evidence of the little-understood Fremont hunter-gatherers.
Nigeria is to send troops to assist in the peace process in southern Sudan, where Africa’s longest running civil war appears to be on the brink of being resolved, an army spokesperson said on Thursday. Defence authorities have yet to decide whether the troops will be under the auspices of the United Nations peacekeeping mission.
One wished him well, while another wished him a fate similar to what he allegedly bestowed upon hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. As former dictator Saddam Hussein appeared in court on Thursday, some of the 25-million people who spent the better part of their lives under his authority voiced mixed emotions about the proceedings.
In a judgement hailed as a landmark by the Pan South African Language Board (Pansalb), the Pretoria High Court has ordered the Department of Labour’s Compensation Commissioner to change its policy of communicating only in English. The court found the department and its commissioner in breach of the Pansalb Act and the Constitution. The ruling has signalled to government departments that multilingualism must become a reality.
The installation of ”intelligent road studs”, along a notorious stretch of road in KwaZulu-Natal, has seen accidents drop so dramatically that the province’s transport department has just had them installed on another stretch of highway. The studs have seen fatalities drop from 27 in the seven months prior to the start of installation in October 2002, to one.
Two NGOs working with the poor and working classes demonstrated on Thursday against their eviction by the Johannesburg Development Agency from a building in Newtown, Johannesburg. Approximately 50 people from Khanya College and the Workers’ Library demonstrated outside the old municipal compound.