A 62-year-old retired man plans to travel from his hometown in Portugal to Germany by bicycle in order to attend the 2006 World Cup, which gets underway on June 9. Jose Fortunato left Vila Franca de Xira, some 30km north-east of Lisbon, on Sunday and he expects to arrive in Munich, which will host the opening game of the 64-match tournament, on June 8.
First quarter figures on unit trust sales and net inflows suggest growing maturity among South African investors and indicate that a key lesson has been learned — selling high is a lot better than selling when the market hits the bottom. The quarterly perspective comes from Kim Zietsman, head of single manager unit trusts at Stanlib, South Africa’s largest unit trust company.
The European Union is preparing a bold offer for Iran, including economic, nuclear, and perhaps security guarantees, to try to curb its atomic ambitions, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Monday. "It will be a generous package, a bold package, that will contain issues relating to nuclear, economic matters, and maybe, if necessary, security matters," Solana said.
Embraced by Nazi Germany and perfected in apartheid South Africa, Sasol’s Fischer-Tropsch process, which converts gas or coal to liquid, is now the sexiest thing in energy. In a post-9/11 world beset by sustained high fuel costs, concerns over energy security and growing environmental pressures, Sasol finds itself alone as the market leader in the conversion of both coal and gas to liquid fuels.
The Philippines began cleaning up on Sunday after tropical storm Chanchu claimed 32 lives, left large parts of the country under water and forced thousands to flee their homes. By midday on Sunday Chanchu was 430km out in the South China Sea, charting a west-south-westerly course and packing winds of up to 140kph, according to the weather bureau.
The Australian government indicated on Sunday that it would consider taking back nuclear waste from countries that buy its uranium under a system known as "nuclear-fuel leasing". Prime Minister John Howard is expected to discuss the issue, which aims to limit the possibility of spent fuel being used in weapons, with United States President George Bush.
A strong earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale shook Indonesia’s tsunami-deva ed province of Aceh on Saturday causing residents to flee their homes, an official said. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties. The undersea quake hit at 10.30am local time.
Thousands of villagers began fleeing their homes in the path of red-hot lava flows oozing from Indonesia’s Mount Merapi on Saturday as officials said an eruption looked imminent. But many residents were still reluctant to leave their homes, despite a mandatory evacuation order, they said.
Heavy fighting flared anew on Friday in the lawless Somali capital Mogadishu as Islamic militia and gunmen loyal to a United States-backed warlord alliance clashed for a sixth day with little respite. At least 13 people were killed in the new violence, and four bodies were recovered from a house hit by mortar shells in Mogadishu’s northern Sisi neighbourhood, witnesses said.
Four ministers appointed by Nepal’s king during his 14 months of absolute rule were arrested and detained for 90 days on the orders of the new government on Friday, relatives, police and media said. Former home minister Kamal Thapa, ex-foreign minister Ramesh Nath Pandey and the royal government’s spokesperson Shrish Shumshere Rana were among those rounded up.
Up to 200 people died on Friday when an oil pipeline blew up at a beach village near the Nigerian economic capital, Lagos, a police officer at the scene said. An Agence France-Presse correspondent at the scene reported seeing scores of carbonised, disfigured corpses floating on the water.
Manufacturing production figures for March show healthy growth of 5,7% in volumes compared with March last year. It was really petroleum products, and motor vehicles and transport equipment that contributed significantly to total quarter on quarter manufacturing growth.
Zimbabwe said Friday that its inflation rate has crossed the 1 000% threshold and is currently at 1 042,9%, one of the highest rates in the world. Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Gideon Gono had predicted in January that inflation would recede to below 500% in June and decline to double digits next year.
The unsuccessful Labour Appeal Court bid on Thursday by security industry employers to have the ongoing strike declared illegal was a grim reminder to both parties of how crucial negotiations were, South Africa’s Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana said on Friday.
During the process of being severely stuffed around (no weak jokes, please) in my recent day-to-day dealings, I’ve found a rather weird exponential scale at work: the hidden tenets of South African commerce.
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=zuma_report"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/243078/zuma.jpg" align=left border=0></a>Jacob Zuma’s official diary for the year 2000, when he is alleged to have met Schabir Shaik and French arms dealer Alain Thetard to request a bribe, was discovered during the Scorpions raid on Zuma’s office at the Union Buildings in August last year.
Families of the victims of last year’s London bombings criticised the government on Thursday for failing to see the attack coming, as two reports into the bloody events of July 7 were made public. Many relatives of the 52 people killed by four suicide bombers were scathing about the reports and demanded a full public inquiry.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has signed into law the Education Act Amendment Bill giving the state powers to fix fees at private schools, in a development education experts say could see standards falling at the schools that are the only sources of a reliable education for young Zimbabweans.
The price of petrol is set to go up by about 20 cents per litre (c/l) next month, taking the price to new record levels, according to Econometrix senior economist Tony Twine. This would mean that the total increase in the price of petrol for May and June is likely to be in the order of around 59 cents a litre.
China on Thursday blasted the Libyan government for holding talks with Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian and letting him visit the country. "Regardless of China’s persuasion and strong opposition, Libya insisted on allowing Chen Shui-bian to stop over," said Chinese foreign-ministry spokesperson Liu Jianchao.
An Egyptian suspected of involvement in the triple suicide bombings that killed 20 people in the Sinai peninsula last month surrendered to the security forces, police officials said on Thursday. The suspect, 25-year-old Khalil al-Menei from the northern Sinai town of al-Arish, was on a list of people wanted in connection with a string of terrorist attacks in the Sinai.
It appears that a number of travel authors are a little preoccupied with death. Your death. Just browse around your local bookstore and you’ll find <i>Getaway’s 1 001 Places to See Before You Die: Places To Go</i>, <i>Things To Do in Southern Africa</i> (Struik), <i>Michael Bright’s Natural Wonders You Must See Before You Die</i> (Cassell Illustrated).
Inspired by a United States radio show for pets, a Thai dog lover has launched a round-the-clock online music radio programme for canines, a report said on Thursday. <i>DogRadioThailand.com</i>, which made its debut on Wednesday, offers both vocal and instrumental music for dogs, the English-daily <i>Bangkok Post</i> said.
China’s biggest internet search engine has launched an online encyclopedia modelled on the US-based website Wikipedia, which is blocked by Beijing. Entries on Baidupedia, the new service from Nasdaq-listed <i>Baidu.com</i> launched last month, are however censored by the Chinese government.
As food prices continue to escalate in Zimbabwe, the number of children suffering from severe malnutrition has increased in suburbs around the capital, Harare, according to aid workers. But they do not rule out that the spike could be linked to HIV/Aids in a country with one of the worst prevalence rates in the world.
"For some time now I have been thinking, how one can justify the undeniable contradictions that exist in the international arena — which are being constantly debated, specially in political forums and among university students. Many questions remain unanswered," writes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
For some, the long-term significance of the case has little to do with the law and much to do with the prospects of an ambitious politician who wishes to be president of the republic. Historians and political scientists can be left to analyse whether it was this trial or other reasons that finally sunk the Zuma battleship or resurrected his prospects.
A total of 174 pages, prompting 174Â 000 opinions. Monday’s judgement in the <i>State v Jacob Zuma</i> has been like the trial itself: divisive and difficult. The not-guilty verdict is one we respect; the reasoning in the judgement is thorough and well-researched, if conservative.
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday that Iran would face "isolation" if it did not establish a nuclear programme that meets international standards. Speaking after talks with Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Rice also stressed that Iran faced a United Nations Security Council resolution over its nuclear programme.
Gases and welding products group African Oxygen (Afrox) is to invest approximately R350-millionin several major new gas production facilities around South Africa during the year. Craig Falconer, Afrox’s general manager process gas solutions, says this expenditure results from increased demand from the company’s existing customer base as well as by new business wins.
Europe faces an increasing threat from attacks with long-range missiles and could help avert the danger by building a missile-defence network, a senior North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) official warned on Wednesday. "There is a growing threat of long-range missile attacks," said Marshall Billingslea, head of Nato’s Conference of National Armaments Directors.
Pressure built on Wednesday on Nigeria over attempts to give President Olusegun Obasanjo a third term in office by changing the Constitution, with United Nations chief Kofi Annan and the Economic Community of West African States weighing into the debate. African leaders should "play by the rules", the UN secretary general said in an interview.