In a paper titled <i>Cultures of Corruption: Evidence from Diplomatic Parking Tickets</i>, Columbia University’s Ray Fisman and Berkeley’s Edward Miguel used parking violation data from the thousands of foreign government officials stationed at the United Nations in New York as a barometer of how corrupt their home countries are.
Robert Laing reviews <i>Viersprong</i>, an anthology of 29 short stories spanning the gamut from cybersex to one story with some lesbian erotica in it.
A scrum to get through passport control and luggage collection, no parking available for anyone who has come to meet you and little chance of making it to the domestic terminal in time for a connecting flight. That’s the typical Johannesburg International airport experience. Fortunately, OR Tambo International airport will be much better.
Never mind Cujo the dog or Christine the car. Imagine the horror of finding a slip from the post office saying this month’s Telkom bill is too big for street delivery. At the post office waits 412 pages, double-sided, listing calls every six seconds to the number your modem uses to get online at Telkom’s minimum charge of 59c each.
Laptop sales have overtaken desktop sales in the United Kingdom, according to retailer PC World. This may not have happened in South Africa yet, but booming laptop sales are great for this country, which produces 77% of the world’s platinum.
Platinum and some of its five sister metals are key ingredients in laptops.
Measured by the South African Advertising Research Foundation’s readership figures, <i>Getaway</i> magazine is the biggest title in the outdoor travel niche with a 480 000 All Media Product Services reading. But, measured by circulation, <i>Weg</i> — Naspers’s Afrikaans imitator — has just under 100 000 sales, beating <i>Getaway</i> by more than 15 000.
South Africa has allocated nearly $50-million to win the site bid for the world’s largest telescope, the Square Kilometre Array. The country is vying against Australia, Argentina and China to host this prestigious European Commission-funded science project.
After the shocking details Pension Funds Adjudicator Vuyani Ngalwana brought to light on the hefty sales commissions and administration fees pocketed by assurers, you would have thought South Africans had learnt to avoid middlemen and invest directly in the stock market by now. Yet there are only about 200 000 South Africans who buy shares.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to a selection of African countries next week highlights the growing importance of resource-rich Africa to the world’s most voracious consumer of any commodity that can fuel industrialisation. His June 17 to 24 visit will take in Egypt, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.
The World Cup 2006 will be the biggest betting event in history, surpassing even the United States’s Super Bowl or National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament, according to online bookie <i>PinnacleSports.com</i>. To international football fans, betting is an integral part of enjoying a tournament.
Online used-car dealer <i>Japan-partner.com</i> offers to ship vehicles from Nagoyao to Durban for $70 per cubic metre. "This means that car shipping cost of a Nissan Primera is 10,48 x 70 = $734," is the example in its FAQ. A Nissan Primera in stock costs $1 700, bringing the total cost to R15 251 at the current exchange rate.
Remember Pepsi-Cola’s attempt to re-enter South Africa 10 years ago? From booking its endorsement star Whitney Houston in a stadium where Coca-Cola owned marketing exclusivity to fielding rookie New Age Beverages against the formidable South African Breweries’ Amalgamated Beverage Industries, it was Pepsi’s bloodiest chapter in the history of the cola wars.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/41909/10-X-Logo.gif" align=left>Ten years ago, voters and political parties were willing to turn a blind eye on the amateurish shambles the transitional Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) made of the technology it tried to use to gather and tally votes. The permanent IEC administering today’s election won’t enjoy the same forbearance if its systems fail.
It came as a pleasant surprise — perhaps not to Telkom’s T-Zone or Transtel’s Wireless G Wi-Fi businesses, but certainly to the rest of us — when the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa ruled last October that anyone may operate a Wi-Fi "hotspot" without a licence, provided it is limited to their premises. Are communications wires about to become a relic of a bygone era?
Back in the Fifties, nuclear power was hyped as ushering in an age where electricity would be too cheap to meter. Those power utilities that accepted the sales talk have been given plenty of reasons to regret it ever since. Despite the ‘war on terror’ being the global zeitgeist, it appears that Eskom may have placed itself shrewdly to profit from a form of nuclear energy.
The amount of sewage found on bathing beaches may not seem directly related to privatisation. But the huge improvement in the number of "items a kilometre" on Welsh and English beaches after Britain sold its sewage treatment plants to private firms is a compelling argument in favour of privatisation.