THE retractable roof on Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium will not be closed for the World Cup final, organisers said on Wednesday. “It could only have been considered if we had received written requests from both teams and it is my understanding that we have not done so,” a spokeswoman said. France and Australia, the teams in […]

A FURTHER seven people, including two policemen, have been killed in fresh clashes between members of the OPC, a militant Yoruba nationalist group, and Ijaw youths in Lagos, reports said on Thursday. Weekend communal clashes between Ijaws and members of the Odua Peoples Congress (OPC) claimed at least 12 lives, the local Guardian newspaper reported. […]

STANDAND Bank was on Wedneday awarded the tender to provide its banking services to the Gauteng provicial government. Finance and economic affairs MEC Jabu Moleketi annouced that the contract has been awarded for a period of five years and runs until March 2005. He said that there was very little to choose between the three […]

FRENCH forward Franck Tournaire has been cleared of an allegation of biting during his team’s World Cup semi-final victory over New Zealand, team media officer Lionel Rossigneux said Wednesday. Tournaire, who was cited 24 hours earlier, will be free to play for France in Saturday’s final against Australia at the Millennium Stadium, Rossigneux said. Tournaire […]

SHARON HAMMOND, Nelspruit | Thursday 3.45pm THE South African Municipal Workers Union has threatened to take legal action against the Nelspruit city council after it signed a controversial deal that privatises the town’s waste and water services for the next 30 years. Samwu spokesman, Steve Sihlangu, said on Thursday that if the council fails to […]

THE White River town council is on the verge of bankruptcy, owes ABSA and life assurance giant Sanlam more than R12-million – an amount the council says it is unable to repay. Sanlam has meanwhile announced that it is suing the council for R3,1-million, for a loan granted before the 1994 elections. “Although White River […]

SPEAKING in Paris at an international conference on globalization Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma spoke on Wednesday of the crushing effects of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. “It is ironic that countries that have instituted sound fiscal and monetary policies so as to try to improve the lot of their nationals should be undermined by the […]

PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela on Thursday afternoon expressed his condolences to the family of Wezi Kaunda, son of former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda, who died on Thursday morning after being gunned down in Lusaka. “He was a prominent figure. His death was a tragedy,” Mandela said at a function to hand over documents from the Rivonia […]

MALARIA kills almost three million people each year because western pharmaceutical companies have refused to develop anti-malarial drugs for impoverished Third World countries. This week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) unveiled a groundbreaking new programme that will develop new anti-malarial drugs every five years for poorer countries. Dr Steven Toovey, producer of the email-based Medinfo, […]

LIBERIA is set to hold its first major post-war conference aimed at reviving a devastated economy, with financial experts and business leaders expected to attend. The three-day conference starting in Monrovia on Thursday is being organised by the Carter Centre, the US government agency USAID, and the Centre for Democratic Empowerment, an organisation headed by […]