Newly installed security alarms at the British royal family’s summer estate in Scotland are going off ”day and night” thanks to the peregrinations of seven Indian runner ducks. The ducks — named Arabella, Antoine, Parsley, Sage, Rose, Mary and Thyme — were acquired by Prince Charles as environmentally friendly, free-range pest controllers around Birkhall, his getaway within the Balmoral grounds.
The original trainee astronauts famously had the right stuff but, more than four decades later, standards may be slipping. Malaysia is to test the physical fitness of hundreds of its citizens who applied to be the country’s first astronaut by asking them to run 3,2km in a less than 20 minutes.
It should have been such a happy day. The wedding presents had been bought, a luxury yacht hired for the ceremony, and the guests — some from as far away as China — had all arrived. But then the bride and groom went and ruined it all by having everybody arrested.
Suspended United Democratic Movement deputy president Malizole Diko plans to form a new party, according to affidavits filed this week in the Cape High Court. The documents are part of the UDM’s bundle of papers in reply to a bid by Diko and five other party officials for an interdict lifting their suspension from the party.
Fixed-line consumers will not enjoy lower telecommunication costs on September 1, as Telkom is yet to reply to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa’s (Icasa) correspondence in which the regulator asked the company to rework some of its proposals, it emerged on Wednesday.
Hundreds of millions of people the world over use the internet every day to shop, chat, work, read the news and plan their next seaside holiday. But many also go online in search of a little extra-marital cybersex, making the internet a new vehicle for adultery, suggests a book recently published in France.
Zambia’s railway authority on Wednesday said it is still waiting for confirmation of the number of people injured in a near-fatal passenger train accident on Tuesday. Several coaches on a train carrying about 500 people derailed and overturned in the town of Mazabuka, about 200km south of Lusaka during peak travelling time.
Vusi Pikoli, National Director of Public Prosecutions and head of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), said on Wednesday the purpose of last week’s raid on properties of former deputy president Jacob Zuma and his lawyers was not to embarrass or humiliate Zuma. He defended the heavily armed ”Hollywood-style” entrance to Zuma’s premises.
The South African Reserve Bank painted a rosy picture on Wednesday of the economy, but warned of threats to inflation. ”The performance of the South Africa economy in recent times seems to be more solid and consistent than before,” the central bank says in its annual economic report, released in Pretoria.
The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria said on Wednesday that it has frozen financing for Uganda after uncovering ”serious mismanagement” in the organisation overseeing its programmes there. The fund said the halt on its grants — which total -million — is temporary.