An Australian <i>Star Wars</i> fan has been left regretting his brush with "the Force" after police arrested him for carrying a toy laser. The 32-year-old was walking through central Melbourne on Thursday when the pistol-shaped laser poking out of his backpack sparked a security scare at the city’s Crown Casino.
A deophobic sermon Shaun de Waal has written a deophobic sermon (“Fighting fire with fire”, May 25), but needs to deal with the evidence evenhandedly. If the wrong religion has done is evidence that belief in God is false, is the right religion has done evidence that belief in God is true? Likewise, does the […]
Lebanon’s worst internal violence for two decades is in danger of spreading throughout the country, politicians, diplomats and refugees warned on Thursday, as anger grew at the tactics of the Lebanese army fighting Islamists in a northern refugee camp.
Among fashionistas, just one name — Prada — reigns supreme. Now that name is finally available in South Africa, for style-obsessed female aesthetes. Callaghan, an exclusive boutique carrying Chloé, Cacharel and Nicole Farhi, has become the first stockist of Prada’s casual-wear range, Linea Rossa. Boutique owner Shirley Tamaris said her first shipment arrived last week.
Deadlocked public-sector unions and the government will meet next week in a special bargaining-council meeting to discuss an impasse on wage negotiations. "It’s a special meeting," Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council general secretary Shamira Huluman said on Thursday.
A homeless pensioner who has slept rough in one of London’s plushest beauty spots since 1986 was celebrating on Thursday after winning ownership of his plot of land, turning him into an instant millionaire. Harry Hallowes (71) secured ownership to an 800 square-metre plot in Hampstead Heath after a two-year legal battle with developers.
The Audit Burea of Circulations says it has decided to add back issues to circulation figures because they are still sold or distributed within the reporting period.
We must celebrate the passage of the Sexual Offences Bill through the National Assembly this week. This vital piece of legislation is now on the home stretch after an extraordinary seven years in the making. But it is also a deeply distressing piece of legislation, for it mirrors how our country is mired in a sex war.
Sales for Afrikaans newspaper <i>Rapport</i> increased by nearly seven percent on Sunday after the Blue Bulls won the Super 14 final. “It was definitely our best Sunday of the year so far,” says senior circulation manager Gerhard Wentzel.<
A robber who tried to hold up a bank using a baby doll and a blood pressure pump was in custody on Wednesday after his heist failed, a Pakistani newspaper reported. The 25-year-old burst into the bank in Karachi on Monday brandishing the doll, which he claimed was a bomb, and the pump, which he said was a hand grenade.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu said Wednesday he was doing "quite well" following a recent article about the recurrence of his prostate cancer. "I am deeply touched by the expressions of concern and assurances of prayer for my recovery and I thank all concerned," Tutu said in a statement.
In the middle of the road into the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, scene of fierce fighting for the past three days, a woman lay shot, her body convulsing, unreachable by the army and Red Cross as snipers continued to fire over her. Inside the devastated camp, residents waited without water or electricity for a ceasefire to come into effect.
Two Ethiopian rebel groups have said they killed 157 troops in the east of the country this month, a claim denied by the government on Tuesday. The Oromo Liberation Front and the Ogaden National Liberation Front said they had launched several joint attacks in recent weeks.
South Africa’s black middle class, sometimes referred to as Black Diamonds, has grown by an astonishing 30% in just over a year, according to a study conducted by the University of Cape Town/Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing and TNS Research Surveys.
The focus of this collection (comprising two main sections, 17 chapters and a synthesis) is the commemoration of 50 years since the passing of judgement on Brown v Board of Education in the United States in the landmark court decision against segregation in education.
Eastern Platinum (Eastplats) listed on the JSE on Monday morning under the "Resources, Mining-Platinum" sector. "The JSE listing will enable us to access South Africa’s capital market and increase our investor base in an environment in which the PGM sector is well understood," said Eastplats president and CEO Ian Rozier.
The Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors has raised the alarm over a shortage of coloured auditors in South Africa, as currently only 38 in the country are registered to sign audit opinions, it was reported on Monday. Kariem Hoosain, Irba CEO, says that the figure is "worrying".
The Pakistani prime minister’s charm failed to work its magic on steely United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice according to a new biography of her, the <i>Dawn</i> daily reported on Monday. The book describes in excruciating detail how Shaukat Aziz allegedly tried to impress Rice when she visited South Asia in March 2005, according to the newspaper.
A New Zealand city dubbed the "suicide capital" by John Cleese has responded by naming a rubbish heap at the local dump after the British comedian. Proving that revenge is a dish best served cold, the sign for Mt Cleese has been erected more than a year after Cleese revealed he had a "thoroughly bloody miserable time" in Palmerston North.
South Africans are bracing themselves for the price of an average home hitting R1-million in 2008 as the property market continues its steady march higher. Tracy French, provincial manager at MortgageSA says looking at the recent trends in house-price data, it is likely that the average price of a home in South Africa will top R1-million in 2008.
Venezuela is to give the American actor Danny Glover almost $18-million to make a film about a slave uprising in Haiti, with President Hugo Chávez hoping the historical epic will sprinkle Hollywood stardust on his effort to mobilise world public opinion against imperialism and Western oppression.
South African retailer Woolworths on Monday unveiled a black economic empowerment (BEE) deal, whereby Woolworths employees will acquire approximately 10% of the group’s ordinary issued share capital. Woolworths will create a new class of convertible, redeemable, non-cumulative participating preference shares with a value 15 cents each.
I heard with a sickening sense of foreboding the news that an airliner had come down somewhere in Central Africa shortly after take-off from Cameroon’s main airport at Douala. Any airliner coming down anywhere in the world fills me with this kind of dread. The feeling is fuelled by hundreds of take-offs and landings across four continents in a long travelling life.
Burundi’s limping peace process could be slowed down further by promises that have allegedly not been kept and growing divisions between the South African mediation team, specialists involved in the negotiations and the main rebel group, Palipehutu-FNL.
Poor countries risk receiving â,¬50-billion less than they have been promised from the European Union by 2010 unless the quality of development aid improves, anti-poverty campaigners have warned. The EU’s development aid ministers met in Brussels this week to assess what progress had been made in realising commitments to increase aid.
Travelling into Palestine’s West Bank and Gaza Strip, which I visited recently, is like a surreal trip back into an apartheid state of emergency. It is chilling to pass through the myriad checkpoints — more than 500 in the West Bank. They are controlled by heavily armed soldiers, youthful but grim, tensely watching every movement, fingers on the trigger.
More than 30 rebel fighters were killed in southern Afghanistan early on Sunday, a police chief said, as the Nato force announced it had killed "a significant number" of Taliban leaders. The rebels were killed in a military sweep involving foreign forces in the southern province of Ghazni, provincial police commander Alishah Ahmadzai said.
A Swedish couple were dismayed to find a 4cm-long bat in their breakfast cereal, the Swedish news agency TT reported on Saturday. The couple in Tanum, in western Sweden, were already part way down the packet when they made their unappetising discovery, the agency said.
Cecilia Sarkozy wears Prada, not the more presidentially correct Chanel, and claims to be more comfortable in a pair of combat trousers. Her best friend is Rachida Dati, a Moroccan bricklayer’s daughter who has just been appointed France’s Minister of Justice.
Ethiopia said on Saturday its troops backing Somali government forces killed nearly 1 000 insurgents in Mogadishu in March and April during some of the heaviest clashes in the city’s bloody history. Renegade Somali leaders living in Eritrea last month vowed to intensify insurgent attacks despite their retreat following the Mogadishu clashes.
A British golf club has lifted an 88-year-old rule banning Germans and Austrians from playing on its course, newspapers reported on Saturday. Filton Golf Club near Bristol in south-west England imposed the law after nine of its members were killed in World War I, with teed-off survivors vowing that the enemy should never be allowed on the course.
Russia sent a signal of open defiance to the West on Friday by arresting several leading opposition figures and detaining Western journalists as they attempted to fly to a critical European Union-Russia summit. Police detained Garry Kasparov — the former world chess champion and a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin — as he tried to board a flight from Moscow.