With the rand looking vulnerable, now is the opportune time to invest offshore, even though global markets are experiencing a soft patch, Mark Appleton, chief investment officer at Barnard Jacobs Mellet Private Client Services, said in a statement on Monday.
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Commuters who suffer through the swelter of summer in the London Underground have been full of ideas about how to cool the trains, but none has managed to present a workable plan, the transport company said on Thursday. The London Underground had offered a £100 000 (R1,1-million) prize for the best plan.
A Czech truck driver who drove into a ditch was found to have 8g of alcohol in his bloodstream, just a month after he was stopped for drunk driving, authorities said on Thursday. "It is the same man we stopped on April 20 with 4,19g" per liter of blood, said the deputy chief of police in the northern town of Lomnice nad Popelkou.
A group of Australian police dogs will have to be retrained after it was discovered that they were sniffing out talcum powder rather than cocaine during training exercises, police said on Friday. An investigation is being carried out into how baby powder was used rather than the illicit drug, Victoria state police said.
Philandering communist-party officials in China’s eastern city of Nanjing will have to confess their extramarital affairs in a bid to stop corruption, according to a new regulation published on Friday. The regulation stems from concerns about declining morality among party ranks, and fears about the link between illicit affairs and corruption.
As everybody is cashing on the Madiba name Mike van Graan figured he could also do the same.
The last of the <i>Star Wars</i> sextuplets has arrived on international cinema screens, and those of us who’ve waited most of our lives for this moment are delirious with joy. We want to sing it from the mountain top, we want to write it in the sky. Free at last, we want to cry. Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!
Striking workers at the parts distribution centre of Volkswagen South Africa at Roodekop have rejected a proposal by the company over outsourcing, demanding job security for workers. Sixty-nine members of the National Union of Metalworkers went on strike two weeks ago, demanding an end to the outsourcing of VW’s packing department at Roodekop, in Alberton on Gauteng’s East Rand.
Declining food production in Southern Africa has shifted the region’s focus to improving small-scale farmers’ access to agricultural inputs like fertilisers. Fertilisers account for one-third of the increase in cereal production worldwide, and 50% of the increase in India’s grain production, but most of Southern Africa’s 20-million farmers are applying too little fertilisers for the effects to be felt.
It was a surprising image: a spear-toting primitive man pushing something very like a shopping cart. Perhaps less surprisingly, this bit of "cave art" had been placed in the British Museum by a prankster. The spoof was claimed by Banksy, the self-styled "art terrorist" who has previously placed fakes in galleries.
Australia has more than its fair share of sharks, crocodiles, deadly spiders and jellyfish, and now residents of one town have been warned to beware a new hazard — the exploding toilet. The local sewerage authority will be cleaning the sewage mains with high-pressure jets.
A monkey is on the loose in Tokyo, hanging out at train stations, frightening children and leading to a wild chase by television crews hoping for a glimpse of the unusual visitor to the metropolis. The monkey, believed to be a Japanese macaque, was first spotted on April 30.
The Merowe/Hamadab dam being built on the Nile River in northern Sudan could cause serious environmental problems, two environmental advocacy groups have warned. The dam is currently the largest hydropower project being developed in Africa and is expected to be completed between 2007 and 2009.
Standard Bank has shut down a phony internet site set up by fraudsters to obtain customers’ banking details. The bank established early on Thursday that a fraudulent e-mail was being circulated, attempting to obtain customers’ internet passwords, card numbers and personal identification number details.
The separation of party and state is one of the basic principles underlying our constitutional order.
A German woman in her 80s said on Tuesday she has been ordered by her pension fund to produce a certificate to prove she is still alive. Martha Kruse telephoned the Bundesknappschaft fund after her payments were suddenly stopped, only to be told by an employee: "Don’t get upset, but you died on January 28."
Claiming invasion of privacy and humiliation, a staff attorney for a United States senator has filed suit against a woman who published details of their sexual relationship on her blog, or web log. Robert Steinbuch, a counsel for Republican Senator Michael DeWine, filed the civil suit on Monday.
Hong Kong’s new Disney park on Wednesday began taking bookings for wedding parties with a Mickey Mouse theme at a price of nearly $1 500 (R9 600) per table of 12. Couples will be able to have their wedding receptions at the Hong Kong Disneyland hotel after the theme park, the first in China, opens in September.
Makalani Holdings, a black economic empowerment (BEE) finance company formed by Rand Merchant Bank to mobilise capital for BEE and development investments, listed in the investment companies sector of the JSE Securities Exchange (JSE) on Wednesday. The first trade was at R101 per share, valuing the company at R2,525-billion.
Let’s start with some very sexy, scary, surreal Aids adverts. Scary <i>and</i> sexy? Yup. I mean, think about it — how do you convey the idea of a disease that kills via sex? The French — unlike the African National Congress — actually don’t want their citizens to die, so they came up with some beautifully effective adverts that make the point with breathtaking ease.
The European Union on Tuesday scolded Ethiopia’s ruling party and opposition for premature announcements of their success in the hotly contested weekend elections, but said the process has been relatively smooth. Officials of the National Election Board of Ethiopia cannot confirm any result until Saturday.
South African listed furniture retailer JD Group on Tuesday reported a 38% rise in headline earnings per share to 376,2 cents for the six months ended March 31, from 272,5 cents a year ago. The distribution per share was up by 106% to 185 cents, from 90 cents a year ago.
San Jose police said on Friday they have traced a human finger that a woman claimed to have found in a bowl of Wendy’s fast-food chilli to a friend of the woman’s husband. Anna Ayala was arrested last month after police came to suspect that she had planted the offending digit herself.
About 11 000 people turned out on Friday to feast on an attempt by 250 chefs and culinary students to set a new record for making and eating the region’s renowned nutty spiced chocolate garnish, known as <i>mole</i>. The chefs spent days preparing the famed Puebla sauce, a traditional Mexican food.
Hundreds of posters advertising the upcoming final instalment of the <i>Star Wars</i> film saga have been stolen from bus stops across Mexico City, 20th Century Fox officials said. The posters are made with a glow-in-the-dark material and cost about $6 (R38) each to make.
Regulatory authorities are to hold a public hearing into an application by Cell C to reduce its empowerment shareholding. CellSaf, the empowerment consortium that owns 40% of the country’s smallest cellphone network operator, wants to sell a tranche of shares amounting to 15% of Cell C to Lanun, a Saudi investment firm, for about $180-million.
"Reasons that are fundamental to the building of our South African nation and democracy compel me to respond to the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>’s report and editorial [‘Housing scandal man advising Sisulu’, April 29]," writes Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu.
The Australian foreign ministry apologised on Thursday for a travel advisory that warned that Australia’s western city of Perth is dangerous at this time of year. Travel-advice subscribers received an overnight advisory reading: "This is a message to let you know that Perth is dangerous at this time of year."
Goats, camels and village farmyards might not seem like traditional wedding presents, but all this could change under a novel gift-giving plan unveiled on Thursday by the British charity Oxfam. Couples getting married can ask guests for a charitable donation to be made to communities in 70 countries.
Angry residents of a town in Kyrgyzstan pulled down a monument to the obscure father-in-law of the country’s ousted president and replaced it with a collection of empty bottles in sardonic tribute to his reputed affinity for the odd tipple, an official said on Thursday.
Musicals are where it’s at, at the moment, and for the staging of these musicals certain key principles might have to apply, writes Mike van Graan.