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/ 1 December 2005
A severe cyclonic storm building in the Bay of Bengal has threatened to curtail the first cricket Test between India and Sri Lanka in Chennai, India, from Friday. That will be bad news for fans in Chennai who have already seen the past three international matches here fall by the wayside due to bad weather.
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/ 1 December 2005
Japanese pet owners can now embark on their foreign travels safe in the knowledge that their pampered pooches and moggies will be living in the lap of luxury at a five-star ”pet hotel” that opens on Thursday at Tokyo’s Narita airport. The Pet Inn Royal boasts 170 well-appointed rooms — not kennels — for up to 250 animals.
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/ 1 December 2005
Faced with suicide bombings, claims of Iraqi death squads and kidnappings, the Pentagon has come up with an innovative solution to solving the problems in Iraq: buying good news. The military has been paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by a military propaganda unit lauding the United States mission.
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/ 1 December 2005
Three Mpumalanga teachers and a principal have appeared in the White River Magistrate’s Court in connection with alleged examination irregularities, an official said on Wednesday. The four from the William English Medium School, a private school in Hazyview, were released on bail of R5 000 each.
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/ 1 December 2005
South African financial and insurance giant Old Mutual plc on Thursday announced that it is amending its minimum acceptance level for Swedish life assurer Skandia from 90% to more than 50%. The group said all other outstanding terms and conditions relating to its offer for Skandia remain unchanged and as previously announced.
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/ 1 December 2005
South Africa has a new ”super trade-union federation”, but the country will have to wait until July to know what it will be called. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) warned the super-federation not to take the short-sighted position of becoming ”a significant rival to Cosatu”.
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/ 1 December 2005
Controversial Christian evangelist Peter Hammond confirmed on Wednesday that he has been charged with assault following what he said was a Halloween ”accident” with a paintball gun. ”It was meant to be a joke: nobody was meant to get hurt,” he said. ”I laid down a few ground rules: we were just going for teenagers, no kids.”
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/ 1 December 2005
A group of 40 German travel agents were robbed of their handbags at gunpoint in their bus at Cape Town’s Khayelitsha township on Wednesday, SA Tourism said on Thursday. Two armed men stormed into the group’s stationary tour bus and demanded that passengers hand over their valuables and money, SA Tourism said.
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/ 1 December 2005
Shimon Peres resigned from Israel’s Labour party, his political home for most of the past 60 years, on Wednesday to support the re-election of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whom he described as providing the best opportunity for peace with the Palestinians. Peres said the decision to leave Labour was ”neither simple nor mundane”.
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/ 1 December 2005
De Beers, the world’s largest producer of diamonds, on Wednesday said it has agreed to pay -million to settle four United States class-action lawsuits that accused it of overcharging. The settlement ends 11 years of litigation and ”the majority of civil class actions filed against De Beers in the US,” the company said.