Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) worldwide surged in the second quarter of 2007 with $88-billion raised in 531 IPOs, making this the second most active quarter of the last five years, both in number of IPOs and capital raised, according to the inaugural quarterly Global IPO Report from Ernst & Young.
On May 7 this year we heard that one of our learners was shot and killed — allegedly by another learner in what was believed to be a crime of passion. Though the shooting happened during a weekend, such incidents contribute to parents sending their kids to more affluent schools that are perceived to be safer, writes Thokozani Mabaso.
If you teach in a groundbreaking way and can demonstrate that learning has improved as a result of your creative approach, you may be one of two South African educators making your way to Helsinki in Finland to participate in the global Innovative Teachers’ Awards ceremony at the end of the year.
When I was a teenager in the Fifties, very few young girls were sexually active or fell pregnant and, of those who did, suicide was a common “solution”. I fell pregnant at the age of 19 and the reaction from my family pushed me to the point where suicide was something I considered as a means of escape, writes Joan Dommisse.
Since the much-hyped iPhone isn’t expected in South Africa before November this year, cellphone manufacturers are fighting fiercely for the rands of potential South African smartphone buyers. The <i>Mail & Guardian Online</i> looks at three smartphones currently available on the South African market.
It arrived in a blaze of publicity and had frenzied gadget fans queuing for days before its launch last month. But just weeks after Apple’s iPhone was unleashed on shoppers in the United States, researchers say they have discovered how to hack into it and steal personal information.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard had a bad trip on the campaign trail on Tuesday, falling to his hands and knees in front of television cameras shortly after an opinion poll predicted his ouster. Howard, who turns 68 on Thursday, stumbled as he swept into a radio station in the western city of Perth.
First National Bank (FNB) is strengthening its competitive position on the African continent with the official launch of FNB Mozambique in capital Maputo on Tuesday. This follows FirstRand Bank Holdings’s acquisition of 80% shareholding in Banco Desenvolvimento e Comércio (BDC) — a bank based in Maputo.
A showdown pitting human brains against artificial intelligence goes ahead on Monday evening when two professional poker players take on a computer in the world’s first such man-machine challenge. Phil Laak and Ali Eslami will play Polaris, the most sophisticated poker-playing program yet written.
Old media enter into an uneasy alliance with new media on Monday night to grill the Democratic candidates in the United States’s 2008 presidential race. CNN and <i>YouTube</i>, are holding a joint debate in which the public have sent in video-recorded questions for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the other candidates.
United States and Afghan soldiers surrounded a district in central Afghanistan where 23 South Korean Christian aid workers were being held hostage on Sunday night as their Taliban captors extended a deadline for their demands by 24 hours. The insurgents, who snatched the South Koreans from a bus at gunpoint on Thursday, have threatened to start executing the group.
As children, we soon learned, it was different for boys. While they had Superman, Desperate Dan, a legion of Bash Street Kids and the Hardy Boys, for girls, sturdy female heroes were thin on the ground. The pages of Bunty were riddled with ladies who swooned, and simpering boarding-school girls who dreamed of ponies, while on television women were always assistants, love interests or girls who got the collywobbles at the sight of a ghost or a spider.
Those involved in peace and in anti-conscription movements during apartheid, are mourning the loss of peace activist Nan Cross, who died last weekend aged 79. Her religion and her pacifist sentiments meant that her contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle centred on conscientious objection.
Sajida Khan (55) died in her home on Sunday night, during a second bout of cancer caused — she was convinced — by Durban’s largest dump. The Bisasar Road site, which handles most of the city’s rubbish, was placed directly across the street from her home in Clare Estate in 1980.
A Cambodian-born French woman faces prosecution for criminal damage after planting a kiss on a painting by the artist Cy Twombly, leaving the imprint of her lipstick on the otherwise immaculate white canvas.
At what point does the columnist stop being a critic and become merely critical? It is an upsetting moment, when the writer who likes to believe that he is creating small, diverting illuminations on the endlessly reproduced pages of our national manuscript looks up from his doodling, lays down his gold leaf and purple ink, and discovers that he is merely drawing unremarkable cartoons of mediocre grumpiness.
Unions representing South Africa’s platinum miners warned on Friday of strikes in August unless management agreed to pay demands during last-ditch talks next week. Talks between unions and employers stalled on July 11, but a new round will begin on Thursday, National Union of Mineworkers chief negotiator Oupa Komane said.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair welcomed on Friday the announcement that prosecutors will not bring charges over the so-called "cash-for-honours" scandal that clouded his last year in office. But he lamented that those subject to investigation during the 16-month probe had been through a "traumatic" time.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are prepared to make a joint personal trip to Darfur to seek an end to bloodshed in the region, the two leaders said on Friday. Britain would provide "substantial aid", Brown said, but cooperation was needed from the Sudanese government.
The protagonist of one of Portugal’s most gripping courtroom dramas has died after almost 20 years in which she fooled everyone, including her live-in companion, that she was actually a male army general. Maria Teresinha Gomes cut a dashing figure as the respectable and charming General Tito Anibal da Paixao Gomes.
Slower house-price growth, repeated interest-rate hikes and uncertainty about new credit laws and systems have contributed to a slowdown in home-loan applications. Bond originators, however, see their industry becoming increasingly important. Six weeks after the introduction of the new National Credit Act its impact on the property market remains unclear.
Social transformation depends on people and their actions. Too often dogma, simplistic metaphors and inappropriate examples have been the staple answers of socialists and communists to the challenges facing our society. South Africa’s national democratic revolution in the context of our negotiated transition and the strength of global capitalism require not dogma but critical thinking, writes Phillip Dexter.
Jacob Zuma’s theme tune, the not very rousing "Bring me my machine-gun", is certainly a questionable campaign jingle. But that bit of musical demagoguery has nothing on the latest edition of the South African Communist Party song book. South African politics, in a period of spy scandals and conspiracy claims, is a brutal game and there is a certain honesty in naming your enemy.
There was much ado this week over a dress.
A member of one of Hong Kong’s most exclusive golf clubs is suing a fellow player after a stray ball hit him on the head. Alan Deakins has filed a High Court writ claiming he was "struck on the head by a golf ball whilst… walking up the 13th fairway", the <i>South China Morning Post</i> reported on Thursday.
The most important haul of Viking treasure unearthed in Britain in more than 150 years was announced on Thursday by the British Museum. Father and son metal-detecting duo David and Andrew Whelan discovered 617 silver coins, a gilt silver vessel and a gold arm-ring near Harrogate in Yorkshire, northern England — former Viking territory.
United Nations officials issued warnings on Thursday about the collapse of Gaza’s economy and called on the international community to open crossing points for trade. At least 68 000 Palestinians have lost their jobs in the past month since Israel closed the crossings out of the narrow, highly populated strip of land.
It was 3am when armed security agents hammered on the door of Khairat al-Shater’s flat in Nasser City; his daughter Zahra could only watch and comfort her distraught children while her father and husband, Ayman, were detained as Hosni Mubarak’s latest crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood got under way.
Take the gecko, famed for its ability to scale walls, and the mussel, renowned for its clamping quality, and you have the inspirations for a superglue that can stick, unstick and stick again. The glue, dubbed "geckel", can have innumerable uses, say the inventors, whose research is published in <i>Nature</i>, the British journal.
Former Liberian president Charles Taylor has been assigned a new team of lawyers to defend him against war-crimes charges at a United Nations-backed court in The Hague, a court document revealed on Wednesday. Taylor (59), the first African head of state to stand trial before an international court for war crimes, had boycotted the opening of his trial and sacked his lawyer.
A Swiss police force on Wednesday handed out bars of chocolate to motorists in an attempt to encourage safe driving habits. The one-day "Thank You" campaign targeted clean motorists stopped during routine roadside checks, following a rash of serious road offences this year in the western Fribourg region, cantonal police said in a statement.
what could have been a scene from car-heist movie <i>Gone In 60 Seconds</i>, a brazen Malaysian Porsche thief has struck again. After crashing the car, worth more than $280 000, out of an auto showroom, then abandoning it when fuel ran out, the thief returned with a can of petrol and stole it again — this time from the police, reports said on Wednesday.