”Winter is the nightmare for utilities,” said City Power vice-president Silas Zimu as call-centre operators fielded calls from irate, cold and powerless Johannesburg residents on Thursday. ”The network of Johannesburg is old and was meant for the original mining industry,” said Zimu.
A central section of a major road bridge collapsed in northeast China early on Thursday, sending vehicles plunging into a river below, local officials and state media reported. The Xinhua news agency said at least three vehicles were seen falling through the gaping hole in the 500m-long cement and concrete bridge.
The South African Cabinet has approved a programme to develop human capital and improve research and innovation in relation to the pebble-bed modular reactor (PBMR) project, which has been called the world’s sexiest baby nuclear reactor by its proponents.
French police on Thursday discounted reports that a man arrested in Italy on suspicion of masterminding the March 11 bombings on four trains in Madrid was also planning an attack on the Paris underground rail network. An Italian news agency said Italian intelligence officials had intercepted a telephone conversation implying such attacks.
Serial child rapist Joao de Canha was given 10 life sentences on 10 rape charges on Thursday, but might serve just 20 years behind bars. Judge Hekkie Daniels imposed 10 life terms and a further sentence of 69 years and six months’ imprisonment on De Canha after convicting him on 29 charges ranging from rape to assault.
South African President Thabo Mbeki said United States assistance to Africa is too focused on individual countries and should be directed in large measure toward the continent as a whole. Mbeki was making a stopover in Washington on Wednesday before heading to the Group of Eight summit at Sea Island, Georgia.
Millions of Nigerian workers stayed out on strike for the second day on Thursday as union leaders turned up the pressure on President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government over soaring fuel prices. In the commercial hub, Lagos, filling stations remained shut, markets lay deserted and banks were closed.
South African National Defence Force chief Siphiwe Nyanda on Thursday visited three soldiers at Pretoria’s 1 Military hospital who were injured while on peacekeeping duty in the Democratic Republic of Congo last week. One of the patients recounted how he and his colleagues were ambushed.
The three Italian hostages freed in Iraq returned on Wednesday to a tearful, joyful, yet slightly ambiguous welcome as some of the many questions surrounding their ordeal were answered. The men emerged from the Italian prime minister’s jet, which had flown them to Rome from Kuwait City, looking strained and thinner than before their kidnapping, but in good humour.
Resources dominated activity on the JSE Securities Exchange (JSE) in noon trade on Thursday, though the market was flat overall with the positive impact of a weaker rand being offset by lower precious metals prices. Volumes were extremely light with just more than R600-million-worth of shares changing hands.