Mercantile Lisbon Bank Holdings’s shareholders have given the thumbs-up to the bank dropping "Lisbon" from its name to become simply Mercantile Bank Holdings. CEO Dave Brown says the bank wants to break away from the image of being a bank exclusively for the Portuguese community.
A British barrister who admitted being ”drunk as a monkey” during a Hong Kong court case last year has been let off on a charge of assaulting a policeman, a news report said on Wednesday. Roderick Murray (46) was arrested for assault following a disturbance in a supermarket near his home last October when he allegedly pushed groceries and two bottles of wine to the floor.
More than half of British people have no idea why Easter is celebrated, a survey revealed on Wednesday. Just 48% of about 1Â 000 adults questioned for the Reader’s Digest magazine poll correctly answered the resurrection of Christ.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/199502/Zim_icon.GIF" align=left>A Human Rights Watch group spent more than three weeks in Zimbabwe in December 2004 and February 2005. They found that opposition supporters and other Zimbabweans had been intimidated by Zanu-PF and government officials in the run-up to parliamentary elections.
They may be odds-on favourites with the bookies, but history is against the ACT Brumbies overcoming the Sharks in Saturday’s Super 12 match in South Africa. The Brumbies named a strengthened line-up, including gifted fullback Mark Gerard and Wallaby forwards Owen Finegan, Radike Samo and Jeremy Paul, to start against the Sharks at Durban’s Absa Stadium.
The Stormers have made four changes to their Super 12 rugby team to play the Hurricanes at Palmerston North on Friday. Coach Gert Smal on Wednesday announced two changes in the outside backs and two in the forwards as his team chase their first win in the final match of a four-game overseas tour.
Education is one of the most important ”deposits” the government could make in building human capital and ensuring a better life for all, Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool said on Wednesday, ”because it is through education that we give people the resources and the skills to make something of their lives and, in doing so, to contribute to the lives of those around them”.
Leading Shia politicians said on Tuesday that they had finally brokered a deal with Kurdish parties to end a debilitating impasse over the formation of Iraq’s first freely elected government in decades. They said Iraq’s new Parliament, which held its largely ceremonial inaugural session last week, would reconvene on Saturday to try to form a coalition administration.
European Union leaders seemed ready to postpone lifting the arms embargo on China on Tuesday night, responding to Beijing’s adoption of a secession law designed to prevent Taiwan’s moving to independence. The 25 heads of state and government gathered in Brussels for the EU spring summit were under competing pressure from Washington and Beijing.
The crisis over the relocation from exile of Somalia’s transitional government deepened on Wednesday as powerful warlords said they will move to impeach President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. Warlords controlling the capital of Mogadishu said they will introduce a no-confidence motion against Yusuf in Parliament and seek his removal.