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/ 10 January 2006
Colourful Canadian poet Irving Layton, twice considered for a Nobel Prize in literature for his provocative verse, died on Wednesday in Montreal at the age of 93, according to media reports. Layton, who once described himself as "a quiet madman, never far from tears", wrote about 50 books of poetry and prose over five decades.
Online retail in South Africa grew by 20% in 2005, down from the 25% growth rate of 2004, as the industry finds itself lagging due to the high cost of broadband internet access in South Africa. The total spent on online retail goods in South Africa in 2005 was R514-million, up from R428-million in 2004.
Several top Iranian military officers were among at least 11 people killed in a plane crash on Monday, the local media reported, the second such crash in barely a month. The military plane came down near Orumiyeh in northwestern Iran near the Turkish border and all 11 people aboard were killed.
Singapore has completed construction of Southeast Asia’s first air terminal dedicated to serving the booming low-cost airline sector, a major boost to the city’s regional hub status, officials said on Monday. The terminal at Changi Airport is scheduled to be operational on March 26, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore said.
United States software engineers have been called in to help in the search for an actor to play the role of Lord Buddha in a major Indian movie, a report said on Monday. Engineers in Silicon Valley have generated computer images of the Buddha which will be used in the global hunt for an actor to play the lead in the $120-million film by acclaimed Indian director Shekhar Kapur.
Harbin’s popular annual ice festival has opened with an official declaring it free of the toxic chemicals that polluted the northern Chinese city’s water supplies late last year, state press said on Friday. The ice festival, which opened on Thursday, is one of the few tourism drawcards for Harbin, an otherwise bleak industrial city of nine million people.
Scheduled to begin filming in June, <i>Suicide Bomber</i>, a Hindi movie, revisits the London bombings of 2005. Bollywood filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt is striving to portray "Islam as a religion of peace and not dreadful as it is perceived by the world."
A new chord sounded this week in the abandoned <b>Buchardi church</b> in Halberstadt, eastern Germany — the venue for a mind-boggling 639-year-long performance of a piece of music by American experimental composer John Cage.
Nigeria plans to free about 25 000 inmates, many of whom have been awaiting trial for years, in a bid to decongest overcrowded and unhygienic prisons and improve its human rights record. "The issue of awaiting-trial inmates has become an endemic problem in Nigeria," said Justice Minister Bayo Ojo.
British energy giant BP has entered into negotiations with Libya over a multibillion-dollar natural gas exploration and development agreement in the North African former pariah state. Discussions, which are at an early stage, involve a liquefied natural gas project that could supply the North American or European markets, industry insiders reportedly told the <i>Financial Times</i>.
The African National Congress launches its local government election campaign this weekend in Cape Town, the one metropolitan area it stands a real chance of losing. And it is common cause that the war over the city’s demographically complex terrain will be fought for voter turnout. Both the ANC and the DA are focusing on getting supporters to the polling stations on March 1.
In a move typical of its bold and uncompromising style of African National Congress leadership, a convicted fraudster has been appointed to the Cabinet. Prisoner number 456788/98, Mbelikanqa Moujamgabale, currently serving a 33-year sentence for corruption, theft and fraudulently impersonating a tax collector, is the new deputy minister of local government.
Consternation, alarm mixed with quickly suppressed delight, has arisen in African National Congress ranks at the announcement that Minister of Environment, Tourism and Political Hypocrisy, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, is to enter the race for the presidency of South Africa.
Two of South Africa’s most intriguing murder/suicide cases lie closer to being resolved, due to information gathered from documents that have come into the hands of this publication in recent days. The names of these two high-profile South African patriots, Brett Kebble and Hansie Cronje, have never before been linked in any substantial way — until now.
Startling but positive recommendations from the special elimination of Discriminatory Terms and Phraseology Committee, appointed in April last year by President Thabo Mbeki, have been published and will be approved in Parliament during its next session. The recommendations are that the words “black” and “white”, where used in a negative manner, be expunged from official communications.
New Year’s resolutions are generally distinguished by the speed with which they are broken, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth making in the first place. And in this strange, conflicted year, with the toughest battles of 2005 still very much alive, it is worth drawing a few lines in the sand. Here are our suggestions …
An African Union report condemning Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s human rights record has been hailed by South Africa’s official opposition Democratic Alliance. The report of the African Union’s Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights — meeting in Banjul, The Gambia — has urged Mugabe to allow an AU delegation to go on a fact-finding mission to his country.
A highlight of journalism in 2005 was the exposure by the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> about the laundering of R11-million in public funds to the African National Congress’s election coffers via parastatal PetroSA and the private black economic empowerment company Imvume Management. Still unanswered in all the coverage is who ultimately conceived the deal, and why Thabo Mbeki apparently knew nothing of it.
Ringtone provider Jamster’s animated television commercial for Crazy Frog — the "beh-ding-ding-dingy" ringtone turned dance hit — was named on Tuesday as the most irritating ad in Britain in 2005. Marketing magazine editor Craig Smith said the Crazy Frog advert’s irritation factor was caused by the frequency with which it was repeated during advert breaks.
Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change will have a new president by February next year following the incumbent leader’s failure to uphold its Constitution and values, Zimbabwe’s state-run<i>Herald</i> quoted a senior party official as saying on Tuesday.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said on Tuesday that it has not requested an inquiry into the deaths of more than two dozen Sudanese refugees after Egyptian police forcibly broke up a three-month protest outside the agency’s Cairo offices. Egyptian judicial sources said on Saturday that they would launch a government-led inquiry.
Cambodia is mimicking Myanmar’s repressive tactics with its arrest of two prominent rights leaders, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday. Kem Sokha, head of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, was arrested on Saturday, while police also seized Yeng Virak, the director of the Community Legal Education Centre.
The holder of a British lottery ticket worth nearly £10-million (about R109-million) lost it all on Monday, when the six-month deadline for claiming the winnings expired. Most likely, the unlucky winner, from Doncaster in South Yorkshire in northern England, simply forgot to check the ticket.
South Africans are quite optimistic about 2006, a Gallup International Voice of the People survey shows. While almost half (48%) of the 52Â 000 world citizens who were interviewed in the global survey felt that 2006 would be a better year than 2005, about 60% of South Africans believed it would be better.
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/ 30 December 2005
World oil prices eased on Friday on profit-taking ahead of the New Year but held on to the astonishing 40% gains made over the course of 2005, dealers said. New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in February, lost 45 cents to $59,87 per barrel in electronic trading.
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/ 30 December 2005
South African national Education Minister Naledi Pandor is to visit schools which produced senior certificate results of between zero and 20% in the 2005 examinations. The minister said that she would "crack the whip" at these schools. She said she would be visiting the schools "in the next two weeks".
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/ 30 December 2005
A Malaysian man is claiming a new record after teaching non-stop for 88 hours, in a feat involving hundreds of students which left him with a sore back and high blood pressure, a report said on Friday. "My doctor actually advised me against doing this, but I was determined to show my love for teaching," A. Elanthevan told the <i>New Straits Times</i>.
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/ 29 December 2005
South Africa’s official opposition says it will challenge the education quality assurance body, Umalusi, to state publicly how much the marks in the nationally set matriculation subjects have been adjusted upwards. The results — which are being released to pupils around the country on Thursday — will be officially released by national Education Minister Naledi Pandor in Cape Town later.
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/ 29 December 2005
China’s coldest restaurant is doing a roaring trade as deep winter sets in, with customers flocking to the all-ice building and its steaming "hot pot" meals, state press reported on Thursday. The restaurant can accommodate 100 patrons, who reportedly love the novelty of even the bar, tables and chairs being made from ice.
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/ 28 December 2005
Bus subsidies cost the national Transport Department R2,17-billion in 2003/04, according to the department’s annual report for 2005. The report, tabled in Parliament, noted that Gauteng received the largest cut of the nine provinces — with R788-million — followed by KwaZulu-Natal with R452-million. The Western Cape received R380-million.
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/ 28 December 2005
The killing of Malaysian bomb maker Azahari Husin by Indonesian police may spark revenge attacks against the country’s president, Indonesia’s spy chief warned on Wednesday. Syamsir Siregar said that before his death, Azahari, and his compatriot Noordin Mohammad Top — who is still at large — had recruited an unspecified number of trained militants.
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/ 28 December 2005
Israeli warplanes early on Wednesday staged a raid on a Palestinian base in the southern outskirts of Beirut, a military spokesperson said. "This raid is a riposte to the rocket attack against the north of Israel," he declared. "We consider this kind of attack serious." Seven Katyusha rockets were fired at north Israel from southern Lebanon overnight on Wednesday, Lebanese police said.