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/ 21 February 2008
John McCain denied a romantic relationship with a female American telecommunications lobbyist on Thursday and said a report by the New York Times suggesting favouritism for her clients is ”not true”. The likely Republican presidential nominee described the woman in question, lobbyist Vicki Iseman, as a friend.
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/ 21 February 2008
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton criticised rival Barack Obama as a big dreamer with little substance on Wednesday as she sought to slow his momentum from 10 straight victories in the race for the party’s United States presidential nomination.
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/ 20 February 2008
The publisher of three of the San Francisco Bay area’s largest daily newspapers is offering employees buyouts and bracing them for layoffs in another blow to the struggling newspaper industry. The Bay Area News Group publishes the San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times and other daily and weekly newspapers in the region.
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/ 14 February 2008
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation (News Corp) is negotiating to rescue embattled internet company Yahoo! through an alliance that could set up a heavyweight business showdown between the Australian-born media mogul and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. News Corp has begun tentative talks about merging its online division with Yahoo!.
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/ 13 February 2008
Verita Bouvaire Thompson, the reputed long-time mistress and confidante of Humphrey Bogart, has died. She was 89. In 1982, Thompson wrote a revelatory book called Bogie and Me: A Love Story in which she described a 14-year secret love affair with Bogart that overlapped his marriage to Lauren Bacall.
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/ 8 February 2008
British police have concluded that Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was killed by the force of a suicide bomb and not by an assassin’s bullet, he New York Times reported in its Friday editions. The findings, if confirmed, would support the Pakistani government’s explanation of Bhutto’s death.
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/ 4 February 2008
Tyson Gay has heard stories that some athletes may wear face masks at the Beijing Olympics, hoping to fend off fumes in one of the world’s most polluted capitals. ”I hear a lot of people saying, ‘You’ll have to wear a mask, you’ll have to do this or that,”’ the 100m and 200m world champion said on Monday.
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/ 31 January 2008
Troubled pop icon Britney Spears was rushed to hospital in an ambulance early on Thursday morning for the second time this month for an involuntary mental health evaluation, United States media reported. Spears was taken to the UCLA Medical Centre at about 1.30am local time, celebrity website TMZ.com said.
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/ 29 January 2008
Mining company Rio Tinto will review plans for a major aluminium investment in South Africa as the country continues to suffer from serious power shortages — the first sign that the current crisis could hit foreign investment, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
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/ 23 January 2008
Actor Heath Ledger was found dead at a Manhattan apartment, naked in bed with sleeping pills nearby, police said. He was 28. Ledger, who moved to the United States at age 19, quickly turned away from typical teen films and instead started to build a career on more challenging roles.
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/ 22 January 2008
India’s worst-ever outbreak of bird flu could turn into a disaster, an official warned on Tuesday, as five people were reportedly quarantined with symptoms of the virus. Eight districts in the eastern state of West Bengal have been hit by the virus, and dead birds are being sold and locals said to be ”feasting” on cheap chicken.
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/ 22 January 2008
About 500 people were trapped at the top of Table Mountain on Monday night for three-and-a-half hours after an Eskom power cut, the Times reported on Tuesday. Some of those stranded were in two cable cars suspended in mid-air. A spokesperson for the cableway said that the power cut jerked key equipment on the two cars out of alignment.
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/ 21 January 2008
South Africa was set on Monday to ration electricity in a bid to stem a spiralling crisis that has dealt a severe blow to its status as the continent’s economic powerhouse. After mounting anger over daily power cuts that have cost business hundreds of millions of rands, the government said it was drawing up plans that could see consumers fined if they exceed set quotas.
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/ 7 December 2007
The CIA destroyed video evidence of the coercive interrogation of al-Qaeda operatives held under its secret rendition programme in order to shield agents from prosecution, it was revealed on Thursday. The decision to destroy two videotapes documenting the use of waterboarding against Abu Zubaydah and another high-value al-Qaeda detainee was made in November 2005.
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/ 5 December 2007
The family of Fred van der Vyver, the acquitted accused in the Inge Lotz murder case, intends suing the state for his wrongful prosecution, the Times online reported on Wednesday. Van der Vyver’s father, Louis, said the next logical step would be an investigation into the actions of the detectives responsible for presenting controversial fingerprint evidence.
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/ 22 November 2007
Britain’s newspapers savaged Steve McClaren on Thursday after the England manager failed to guide his team to the 2008 European Championships. McClaren was expected to be sacked within hours of going to print as the national press put the boot into the Yorkshireman following Wednesday’s 3-2 defeat to Croatia.
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/ 20 November 2007
California on Monday launched a lawsuit against 20 companies, accusing them of manufacturing or selling toys with illegal quantities of lead, a statement said. California attorney general Jerry Brown said the firms — including Mattel and Toys ”R” Us — are being sued for knowingly exposing children to potentially dangerous lead levels.
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/ 15 November 2007
Troubled soul singer Amy Winehouse kicked off her 17-date British tour with a shambolic performance that saw fuming fans booing and marching out, reports said on Thursday. The concert at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham, Britain’s second city, was a chance for the 24-year-old to get back to singing and put her woes behind her.
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/ 14 November 2007
Ira Levin, the playwright and novelist who wrote Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives and The Boys From Brazil, has died at the age of 78, the New York Times reported on November 13. Levin died on November 12 at his home in Manhattan, apparently of natural causes.
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/ 4 November 2007
Bush administration officials are weighing a plan that would grant detainees at Guantánamo Bay greater rights, as part of an effort to close the facility and possibly move some of the detainees to locations in the United States locations, the New York Times reported in Sunday editions.
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/ 30 October 2007
United States State Department investigators looking into the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad last month offered immunity deals to Blackwater security guards. The investigators from the agency’s investigative arm did not, however, have the authority to offer such immunity grants.
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/ 28 October 2007
A federal grand jury is investigating allegations that magician David Copperfield raped and threatened a Washington state woman at his estate in the Bahamas, a newspaper reported. The Seattle Times reported on Saturday that at least three federal law-enforcement officials, whom the paper did not identify, confirmed the grand jury investigation.
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/ 19 October 2007
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As a wax model of English rugby star Jonny Wilkinson joined the statue of national hero Horatio Nelson in London’s Trafalgar Square, attention in both England and South Africa was on Friday focused on the looming Rugby World Cup final between the two nations.
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/ 18 October 2007
An American scientist who won the Nobel Prize for co-discovering the molecular structure of DNA has caused an uproar in Britain by reportedly saying tests have indicated that Africans are not as intelligent as whites. A government minister, scientists and a human rights activist condemned James Watson’s comments as racist.
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South Africa’s media on Monday declared the Springboks as the new favourites to win the Rugby World Cup after they narrowly avoided becoming the third victim of a weekend of quarterfinal upsets. Newspapers breathed a sigh of relief that the Boks saw off a brave challenge by Fiji, who at one stage were level-pegging at 20-20.
President George Bush said on Friday that the United States does not use torture during interrogations, amid renewed debate about his administration’s methods in the war on terror. ”This government does not torture people. We stick to US law and our international obligations,” Bush said.
A Thai chef cooked up fears of a chemical attack in London when fumes from his eye-wateringly hot chilli sauce led to the emergency services being called out. Chalemchai Tangjariyapoon, who works at the Thai Cottage restaurant in Soho, was dry-frying bird’s eye chillies as he prepared a huge batch of nam prik pao.
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/ 26 September 2007
Most media captains are tightly focused on their business, meaning that they understandably don’t pay much attention to seemingly obscure stuff outside their silo — for example, the rampaging online social networking among online youth. But some remember that a once-unknown IT business called Google came from nowhere to feast on their erstwhile monopoly of audience time and advertising tribute.
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/ 18 September 2007
The New York Times said on Monday it will end its paid TimesSelect web service and make most of its website available for free in the hopes of attracting more readers and higher advertising revenue. TimesSelect will shut down on Wednesday, two years after the Times launched it, which charges subscribers ,95 a month or ,95 a year.
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/ 18 September 2007
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Jonny Wilkinson, who kicked the extra-time drop goal in 2003 to win the Rugby World Cup, could be England’s saviour again after declaring himself fit to play against Samoa on Saturday. Writing in his weekly column on Monday in the Times, Wilkinson said he is ready to test his right ankle with England needing to win in Nantes and then beat Tonga in Paris .
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/ 15 September 2007
A Chinese journalist jailed while working for the New York Times was released on Saturday, ending a controversial prison term that highlighted the country’s tough media controls. Zhao Yan, looking noticeably thinner, was greeted by a small group of family and friends, including his daughter and sister, when he emerged from prison.
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/ 14 September 2007
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin park their jet just a stone’s throw from their offices, paying $1,3-million a year for rights at a federally maintained airfield, the <i>New York Times</i> reported Thursday. Why put up with bothersome local traffic when you can shell out a princely sum for take-off and landing rights just a few minutes from your office?