The North West provincial government said on Thursday that an anti-corruption hotline phone number it had released was incorrect. Premier Popo Molefe said members of the public should use the ”transparency hotline” number to report acts of corruption ”or any deviations from clean and accountable governance”.
A pair of German scientists have become early frontrunners for the 2004 ”Ig Nobels” — the annual awards handed out for eccentric research — thanks to their work in calculating the pooping power of penguins. These flightless birds are known to expel their faeces with great force.
Of an estimated 27-million eligible voters in the country, about 19,4-million have registered to date, the IEC said on Thursday. According to IEC chairperson Brigalia Bam, this is a high rate. If two or three million more people register during the next targeted enrolment weekend, that will amount to a world record, she said.
The only pub in Australia’s hottest Outback town has shut down after its temporary manager quit. The Iron Clad hotel has been serving icy cold beer in Marble Bar, a town of 300 people where the temperature often rises above 40 degrees Celsius, for 111 years.
Rustlers shot and killed 10 people, including five children, in two raids in northern Kenya and set dozens of huts on fire before stealing thousands of goats and hundreds of camels, officials said on Thursday. Security forces were pursuing the two groups of attackers who were attempting to return to their home villages.
An inquiry must be launched into the impact the Zimbabwean banking crisis will have on South African banks that have major equity stakes or subsidiaries active in Zimbabwe, the Democratic Alliance said. ”Minister [Trevor] Manuel must break his silence on the economic consequences of quiet diplomacy,” a DA spokesperson said.
The media have recently reported extensively on the furore surrounding global group Parmalat, leading to speculation about the certainty of the company’s prospects in South Africa. Parmalat South Africa has said it is not in any financial difficulty, but other parties, including a local union, disagree.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=29402">Parmalat chaos still spreads</a>
President Bakili Muluzi’s convoy was caught in a five-car pile-up on Wednesday that injured Presidential Affairs Minister Ken Lipenga and three other people, officials said. Muluzi escaped unharmed. The accident occurred as Muluzi was returning home from the airport after attending a political rally in the Kasungu region.
The number of smokers is expected to decline in rich nations but will rise in developing countries by 2010, according to a report published on Thursday by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
A 56-year-old man was on Wednesday night pulled alive from the rubble of the Bam earthquake in southwest Iran, 13 days after the tragedy, medical officials said on Thursday morning. More than 30 000 people are believed to have died in the quake, which struck the town before dawn on December 26.