Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged on Wednesday that he was absent-minded after forgetting to bless the hundreds of pilgrims who attended his weekly audience at his Castel Gandolfo summer residence. He said his mind was already in Cologne, where he is to travel on Thursday.
The Department of Social Development’s anti-corruption campaign prevented R400-million from being stolen this year, Minister of Social Development Zola Skweyiya said on Wednesday. Skweyiya said to date the department and law enforcement have taken legal action against 109 officials, with more expected to face the same.
When China under Deng Xiaoping began to discard the socialist legacy after Mao’s death in 1976, the economist Xue Muqiao, who has died aged 100, played a leading role in formulating theory for the new era, but never lost touch with everyday life. His essays gave outsiders a clue to the pace of change, and Xue also called for the return of street stalls and snack bars in the capital.
Distell, South Africa’s largest listed wine and spirits producer, has reported a 34,1% increase in its headline earnings per share for the year to the end of June 2005, to 245,8 cents from 183,3 cents a year earlier. The company declared a final dividend of 67 cents per share, bringing the total dividend for the year to 123 cents per share.
Thirteen people were injured at Samancor Chrome’s Middelburg Ferrochrome smelter on Wednesday morning following an accident that resulted from a sudden release of hot gases from an arc furnace. "Our employees’ care is now in the hands of the doctors and medical staff," said Samancor Chrome CEO Jurgen Schalamon.
South African motorists top the list in a study of road rage over 12 months in 10 countries. ”Eleven percent of South African drivers claim to have been at the receiving end of threatening behaviour in the past 12 months,” according to international market-research company Synovate’s report.
Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon has blasted the government over its claim that the crime rate is stabilising. He repeated his party’s assertion that the murder rate is roughly the same as the death rate from terror attacks on civilians in Iraq, and further accused the government of failing to make crime a priority issue.
Russian veterinary workers incinerated thousands of slaughtered fowl on Wednesday in an attempt to prevent a bird-flu epidemic blamed on wild ducks from spreading further west toward Europe. An expert blamed Russia’s growing problem on a failure to keep domestic fowl isolated from wild birds.
Australia is planning its biggest global recruitment drive since the ”£10 pom” campaign of the 1950s by trying to lure 20 000 skilled workers to the country with promises of shorter hours, a better climate and a lower cost of living. The government says there are shortages in many areas and that recruiting from abroad is the only way of shoring up key industries.
A black maid who was executed in 1945 for killing the white man she claimed had held her in slavery and threatened her life is to receive a pardon from the state of Georgia. Lena Baker, the only woman executed in Georgia’s electric chair, was sentenced to death by an all-white, all-male jury after a trial that lasted just one day.