No image available
/ 12 October 2004
Officials in central China have refused a father permission to name his son ”@”, a news report said on Tuesday. The father from Zhengzhou, Henan province, wanted to name his son after the computer keyboard character used in every email address, arguing that the symbol was now in common usage.
No image available
/ 12 October 2004
Capitec Bank and MasterCard Southern Africa on Tuesday announced a pilot of the world’s first pre-authorised debit card based on the EMV standard, in the town of Phuthaditjhaba in the Free State. The new debit card is specifically designed to provide a straightforward, low-cost banking product with easy access to the mass market.
No image available
/ 12 October 2004
Johannesburg is a city beleaguered by memories of its glorious past. There are just too many people who knew it back in the good old days. And like the city that houses it, the fabulously sophisticated past of the landmark Carlton Centre and hotel complex is spoken about with similar reverence. The present just can’t compare. In the second of the Home Brew series, we profile a Carlton
Centre enjoying an ”African renaissance”.
No image available
/ 12 October 2004
Ordinary South Africans on Monday celebrated a decade of democracy by sharing with Parliament their experiences of the ”rainbow nation”, whose post-apartheid Constitution ensures equality for all. But many of the 150 participants who attended the special session complained that the black majority were still sidetracked after decades of oppression, and formed the main chunk of the jobless.
No image available
/ 12 October 2004
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe wrapped up a three-day state visit to Mozambique on Wednesday by playing down the economic and social turmoil in his country. Mugabe told journalists the meeting with Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano was very fruitful and the two had discussed the state of his own country.
No image available
/ 12 October 2004
Rescue crews were searching for survivors on Monday after a large wooden canoe capsized on a lake in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, killing at least 23 people, a spokesperson for the United Nations peacekeeping force said. About 43 people survived the accident late on Sunday on Lake Kivu and were safe ashore.
No image available
/ 12 October 2004
Operations at Impala Platinum (Implats) will return to normal at 9pm on Tuesday after the company and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) agreed to an 8% pay increase, backdated to July 1. As part of the settlement, the NUM has agreed to support initiatives to improve productivity through technological advances.
No image available
/ 12 October 2004
Eight schoolchildren died and 60 were seriously injured in a bus accident in Tabankulu in the Eastern Cape on Monday, the provincial transport department said. Spokesperson Tshepo Machaea said the children from the Mtutukazi Junior Secondary School were on a tour to East London when the driver lost control while negotiating a curve, causing the bus to overturn.
No image available
/ 12 October 2004
It was late afternoon as Major Joel Hagy made a delivery to a private health clinic less than five minutes drive from his base on the outskirts of Sadr City, Baghdad’s violent eastern Shia slum. Even though the area around the clinic was thought to be quiet, it required three armoured Humvees and a dozen soldiers, three with machine guns, to bring just four cardboard boxes of medicine.
No image available
/ 12 October 2004
Myanmar’s military junta, one of the world’s most oppressive regimes, must be pleased with its weekend’s work at the 39-nation Asia-Europe (Asem) meeting in Hanoi. Asem expressed a vague hope that the regime’s spurious ”national reconciliation process” would succeed and ”looked forward to the early lifting of restrictions on political parties”.