The excitement of the Absa Cup starts this weekend, and the boys will be separated from the men as they try to reach the quarterfinals. For the lower-division teams, it will be do or die against the Premier Soccer League teams. It seems the lower-division teams have reached the end of the road unless they plan to surprise their opposition, as Silver Stars did in 2003.
A fire broke out on a tanker belonging to the Pakistan navy at a dock in the southern port city of Karachi on Thursday, and relief officials said at least 60 people — most of them sailors — were injured in the blaze. A naval doctor said he fears many others are trapped on the ship.
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Deputy President Jacob Zuma’s legal adviser Julie Mahomed went into the witness box at the Schabir Shaik fraud and corruption trial in the Durban High Court on Thursday. She has testified about a loan agreement that she drew up between Zuma and Shaik in May 1999.
Listed plastic and packaging producer Transpaco has finalised negotiations to purchase printed cartons producer Britepak Trading for R18,5-million, payable out of Transpaco’s resources, the group announced on Thursday. The acquisition provides a vehicle for Transpaco to lessen its dependence on plastic-based materials.
The former acting vice-chancellor of Vista University, Professor Sipho Seepe, has accepted responsibility for ”sloppiness” in an essay he wrote after it was pointed out that certain passages are identical to those on a number of websites. The essay was published in the book Towards an African Identity in Higher Education.
In an experiment designed to test out one of the oldest arguments in the battle of the sexes, a British village is to be temporarily stripped of its womenfolk to see if the remaining men are able to cope. The stunt will be carried out in Harby, a tiny community in northern England, and filmed for a BBC reality television series called <i>The Week the Women Went</i>.
In a feat that put human sword swallowers to shame, a British dog managed to gulp down a stick only 5cm shorter than its own body, and escape unscathed, a report said on Thursday. Millie, a two-year-old Staffordshire bull terrier, swallowed the stick by accident while on a walk with her owner in fields behind his home.
United States-made audio players installed at Beijing’s international airport to scare birds off the runway have failed because of the "language barrier", state media said on Thursday. The machines play sounds of predatory birds, such as hawks, to shoo away birds that pose a danger to aircraft. But the pests were apparently unruffled by the "foreign" squawks.
As celebrations go, it will be a muted one. But at 9pm on Thursday evening, anyone who tried and failed to make a fortune in the dotcom boom can be forgiven for sitting back, pouring themselves a glass of millennium bubbly, and thinking about what might have been.
As part of its agenda towards enterprise development, community rehabilitation and public works, the Business Trust has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Public Works and pumped R100-million into the Expanded Public Works Programme, the trust’s chief operating officer, Brian Whittaker, said on Thursday.