A half-smoked cigar enjoyed by Sir Winston Churchill, Britain’s war-time prime minister, was sold at auction on Wednesday for £365 (about R4 800). Churchill had been puffing on the cigar when he arrived for a meeting in Blackpool, north-west England, on October 14 1950.
‘Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello, what’s all this, then? Police are telling booze-fuelled British women to wear nice knickers and wax their bodies, newspapers reported on Thursday. The latest attempt by the police to get hip with the kids is aimed at hammering home a responsible drinking message to irresponsible young women.
The ending of Japan’s zero interest rates marks the end of an extraordinary policy prompted by a situation not seen in any other major economy in post-war times — deflation. Japan entered its deflationary spiral in the wake of the bursting of the asset bubble in the early 1990s.
The South African government has assured the country’s Muslim leadership that there was no security policy specifically directed at the Muslim community. The government said on July 13 a ministerial delegation headed by the Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad had met with a delegation of 60 representatives of the South African Muslim community at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.
Do not fret. Everything will be in place by 2010. Everything. The stadiums will be in place. The trains and taxis will be in place. Naturally it is possible that the stadiums will be in place somewhere else, a decimal on the GPS display overlooked, to provide concrete amphitheatres in which demagogue dassies harangue termites and sun-bleached Pick ‘n Pay packets.
The top World Cup official in Berlin has died four days after shooting himself in the head just hours after the final, the German press reported on Friday. The <i>Berliner Morgenpost</i> quoted a spokesperson of the Charite hospital as saying Juergen Kiessling (65) passed away on Thursday.
A spike in violent crime and the renewed international focus on crime in South Africa ahead of the 2010 Football World Cup has sparked a flurry of activity by the country’s law and order authorities. Insurance experts believe an additional possible factor in the crime rise was the 11-week strike by security guards.
Africa. South Africa. Nigeria. Darfur. Swaziland. Côte d’Ivoire. These are not places we can leave behind. We live there. Bono’s great, but he is your wake-up call, not ours. Africa is too big for soundbites and too complex for generalisations. Imagine that Europe should be thus covered: "The Hopeless Continent. Its economic heart [Germany] is broken; the mafia is threatening a fragile new government [Italy]".
A great deal of concern and angst has arisen following a decision, made after a year of intensive brow-knitting by the Commission for Gender Equality. This august body has decided that male homosexual-only guesthouses are not only quite okay, but Constitution-friendly as well.
Arab foreign ministers will hold an extraordinary meeting in Cairo on Saturday to discuss the latest deadly escalation between Israel and Lebanon and the Palestinians. The meeting "will examine the serious situation in Lebanon and in Palestine, as well as the aggressions and threats made by Israel against them," the pan-Arab body said in a statement.
The circumcision death toll in the Eastern Cape has reached 19 with news on Thursday of the death of another would-be initiate, the provincial health department said. An official said the 18-year-old youth died after being circumcised at an illegal initiation school in the Libode area of Transkei.
South Africa’s banking system remained stable during 2005 and banks in general were sound and continued to benefit from South Africa’s economic health, the bank supervision department of the South African Reserve Bank said in its annual report released on Thursday.
South African power utility Eskom announced a pre-tax profit of R6,8-billion for the financial year ending on March 31 2006 from R7,6-billion for the 15-month period ended March 31 2005. Chief executive Thulani Gcabashe said 2006 had been characterised by a significant number of challenges, particularly in the generation and transmission of electricity in the Cape.
A leading Zimbabwean rights group on Thursday demanded the "immediate release" of 220 protesters arrested across the country as they marched to press for a new Constitution. "Lawyers will be seeking the immediate release of the activists because they are being held by police illegally," Ernest Mudzengi, a senior official of the National Constitutional Assembly, said.
The implementation of a large-scale anti-retroviral treatment (ART) programme will not only extend the lives of HIV-positive South Africans, but will also significantly reduce the adverse economic consequences of the HIV/Aids epidemic. This is according to an in-depth study of the macro-economic impact of HIV and Aids in South Africa under alternative treatment scenarios.
The aerospace industry will be in sharp focus next week when one of its biggest shows opens near London amid a crisis at the European group Airbus that has helped boost the standing of United States rival Boeing. The Farnborough International Airshow comes as Airbus is caught in a storm of bad publicity after revealing production problems in June.
Eurotunnel was to "place itself under the protection of the Paris tribunal of commerce" after the failure of negotiations on its debt with its creditors. Subordinate creditors headed by Deutsche Bank "rejected the last effort to reach a consensual agreement with all the Eurotunnel creditors," said a spokesperson.
Microsoft on Wednesday was calling on users of its Windows and Office 2000 software to install security patches that prevent hackers from taking over their computers. The Redmond, Washington, software giant also made available monthly installments engineered to remove malware.
While most other children were spending their time in school playgrounds, Redda Sarsawe was earning a living for his family by working as a carpenter. "I left school five years ago," says the 14-year-old from Hagar Aswad, an impoverished suburb south of Damascus. "My parents didn’t give me any money for books, so I started working."
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday blamed Lebanon for the capture of two soldiers by the Hezbollah militia, branding the attack an "act of war" and threatening a "painful" response. He ruled out any negotiations with Hezbollah in a bid to free the servicemen, snatched on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
Last Friday UN Special Envoy for HIV/Aids in Africa Stephen Lewis called for a rapid increase in the provision of antiretroviral drugs for Mozambique.
It costs a pretty penny to mint one United States cent. With the prices of zinc and copper going through the roof, the smallest US denomination is now worth more as a commodity than a currency, prompting Americans to wonder whether they should drop the little coin with Abraham Lincoln on its face down the well for good.
The tiny South Pacific Ocean archipelago of Vanuatu is the happiest country on Earth, according to a study published on Wednesday measuring people’s well-being and their impact on the environment. Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica and Panama complete the top five in the Happy Planet Index, compiled by the British think tank New Economics Foundation.
The European Commission is to step up pressure on Microsoft on Wednesday to respect a 2004 antitrust ruling, by slapping huge new daily fines on the defiant software group. With an irritated Microsoft flaunting the ruling, the EU’s competition watchdog is poised to impose fines as high as â,¬2-million ($2,55-million) per day backdated to December 15.
The recent spate of online security breaches has got internet bankers concerned their funds aren’t as safe as they thought — but peace of mind is a mouse click away. Colin Thornton, MD of Dial-a-Nerd, South Africa’s fastest-growing IT support company that specialises in aiding computer users, says 50% of the company’s work now revolves around clearing PCs of spyware and adware programmes.
<i>The Financial Times</i> newspaper said on Wednesday it was to slash up to 50 jobs as it tried to restructure its editorial operations. The British business daily is seeking to integrate better its editing, reporting and production for the <i>FT</i>’s print and online operations.
You don’t have to be gay to enjoy the Heartland, a clubbing zone in the heart of Jo’burg but it helps, writes Riaan Wolmarans.
Fashion Week makes a show of promoting the industry, but, asks Lisa Johnston, do designers benefit after the ‘air kissing’ is over?
I recently wrote an article about the importance of checking your credit record. Taking my own advice, I applied through Credit Health to receive my credit records from both TransUnion ITC and Experian. To my surprise, I discovered that one of the records showed a listing from Standard Bank.
There are low-profile people, but Terry Moolman is a no-profile person. His lack of profile is surprising, though, given the fact that he is one of the country’s leading media barons. Moolman is in the news because it is speculated that he, in alliance with oligarchs Cyril Ramaphosa, Patrice Motsepe and Tokyo Sexwale, is mounting a takeover bid of Johncom.
New York reinforced security on the city’s vast public transit network on Tuesday in response to deadly bomb attacks on commuter trains in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, as United States officials condemned the "horrific" blasts. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero expressed his "profound sadness" to his Indian counterpart.
India’s prime minister on Tuesday vowed to "defeat the evil designs of terrorists" after blasts killed scores in the country’s financial capital, Mumbai, and eight others in revolt-hit Kashmir. Manmohan Singh called for calm in Mumbai and Srinagar after an emergency meeting at his official residence with Home Minister Shivraj Patil.