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/ 17 February 2005
While a world tour may sound appealing to many, making the journey non-stop, with no sleep, and a significant risk of crashing could only appeal to one person. Steve Fossett hopes to soon break as many as seven records, including the first solo, nonstop flight around the world, when he departs on GlobalFlyer.
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/ 16 February 2005
Microsoft will offer consumers who use its Windows operating system free software to battle spyware and eventually antivirus software, chairperson Bill Gates said on Tuesday. Gates said that Microsoft is on track to deliver an antivirus product to consumers by the end of the year, following its acquisition of
Sybari Software.
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/ 16 February 2005
Global sales of personal computers are expected to grow nine percent in 2005, a cooler rate than the 11,6% growth pace of 2004, a market research firm said on Tuesday. Gartner projected worldwide PC shipments of 199-million units in 2005, from 183-million units in 2004.
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/ 7 February 2005
A ,5-trillion 2006 Budget plan proposed on Monday by United States President George Bush will cut many domestic programmes while boosting defence, with a projected deficit of -billion. The proposal, certain to ignite a battle from opposition Democrats, will raise military expenditures by 4,8% to ,3-billion.
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/ 7 February 2005
A local conflict over control of relatively small amounts of oil in Nigeria can have immediate global consequences. Human Rights Watch has released a 22-page report on the conflict between rival gangs in the Nigerian Delta, which underlines the importance of addressing the root causes of the violence that has taken dozens of innocent lives.
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/ 1 February 2005
Microsoft on Tuesday launched its own internet search engine ”built from the ground up”, entering a new market dominated by rivals Google and Yahoo. Microsoft said the search engine, which was unveiled in a test version last November, is now available in 25 markets and 10 languages.
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/ 31 January 2005
Two United States children’s animated characters, Buster the rabbit and SpongeBob SquarePants, have whipped up a storm, with conservative Christians and the new US education secretary scrutinising pro-gay associations in viewing for young children. ”Many parents would not want their young children exposed to [these] lifestyles,” Spellings said.
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/ 31 January 2005
While basking in the apparent success of Iraq’s national elections, the United States still faces some tough hurdles in fashioning an exit strategy from the country it invaded nearly two years ago. US President George Bush has made it clear Iraq has a long and bloody road ahead of it.
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/ 20 January 2005
George Bush swore the United States presidential oath for a second term in turbulent times on Thursday and issued a sweeping pledge to spread liberty and freedom ”to the darkest corners of the world”.
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/ 20 January 2005
With a pledge to battle terrorism and promote democracy around the world, United States President George Bush was to launch his new term on Thursday under an unprecedented security blanket and a dusting of snow. An army of police and Secret Service agents patrolled the streets around the White House.
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/ 19 January 2005
Richard Hatch, winner of Survivor, the unscripted CBS television show, failed to report more than -million at tax time. Hatch (43), of Newport, Rhode Island, also failed to report about  000 paid to him by a Boston radio station, the United States Department of Justice said in a statement.
United States scientists have detected the largest explosion to date in the universe, which saw a mass equivalent to about 300-million suns sucked into a black hole, Nasa said on Thursday. ”The eruption, which has lasted for more than 100-million years, has generated energy equivalent to hundreds of millions of gamma-ray bursts,” Nasa said.
Miss Beazley, a 10-week-old female Scottish terrior puppy, moved into the White House on Thursday. Bred in New Jersey, Miss Beazley was a gift from United States President George Bush to his wife, First Lady Laura Bush, for her 58th birthday in November.
The skies over Asia are being darkened these days by an abundance of relief-bearing cargo planes, reflecting the huge outpouring of international sympathy and support in response to the tsunami crisis. But in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, people might reasonably ask: ”How about some relief for us?”
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/ 14 December 2004
The United States’s trade deficit swelled to an all-time high of ,5-billion in October as imports — including those from China — surged to the loftiest levels on record. Skyrocketing crude-oil prices also contributed to the yawning trade gap. The trade imbalance widened by a sizable 8,9% in October from the previous month.
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/ 14 December 2004
Internet search giant Google announced plans on Tuesday to digitise the contents of millions of library books and make them searchable online. The Silicon Valley firm said it is working with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan and the University of Oxford, as well as the New York Public Library.
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/ 10 December 2004
Digital music players have gotten smaller and sexier this holiday season, hidden in gold necklaces, tucked into sweaters, and squeezed into earpieces for swimmers. The market for flash cards that store everything from text and photos to music has blossomed this holiday shopping season, with companies offering ever more novel products in the fiercely competitive digital music business.
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/ 9 December 2004
A coalition of internet and finance firms along with law enforcement agencies was launched on Wednesday in a bid to halt the growing number of online scams that lure consumers to fake websites to obtain personal and financial data. The perpetrators often use the scam to steal money, credit card numbers, passwords or identity information.
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/ 8 December 2004
For wine snobs, it could be the ultimate vintage guaranteed to impress: a 9 000-year-old prehistoric preserved wine dug up from the Neolithic village of Jiahu in northern China. The vintage Chinese brew was discovered by an international team of researchers including University of Pennsylvania Museum archaeochemist Patrick McGovern.
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/ 8 December 2004
Punxsutawney Phil tried his hand in politics on Tuesday and, in one day, managed to taste it all — the media spotlight, backstabbing, and a trip back home under lock and key. The world’s most famous groundhog, who every year predicts the length of winter, was brought to the national capital by a powerful patron, Representative John Peterson, who managed to slip 000 into this year’s budget for a museum showcasing the weather beast.
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/ 30 November 2004
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has found prisoner abuse that amounts to ”a form of torture” at a United States military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, The New York Times said on Tuesday, citing a confidential report. The Geneva-based agency has refused to confirm or deny the article.
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/ 30 November 2004
If Texas executes Frances Newton as scheduled on Tuesday, she would become the first woman put to death in two years, despite serious doubts about a botched defense and a poor investigation. Only 10 women have been suffered the death penalty since it was reinstated in the United States in 1976, out of a total of 944 executions. Newton, 39, was charged in April 1987 with the murder of her husband and her two children. Her husband was found on the living room sofa with a bullet in the head, while her son and daughter were found in their beds, each with a bullet to the chest.
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/ 15 November 2004
Colin Powell, a son of Jamaican immigrants, became a United States war hero who soldiered on as the chief US diplomat presenting the case for the Iraq invasion to a sceptical world community. Now the 65th Secretary of State has resigned from President George Bush’s administration.
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/ 15 November 2004
Colin Powell has resigned as American Secretary of State, the department said on Monday. Powell (67), a former general, submitted his resignation to President George Bush on Friday, a senior department official said. The White House will announce the resignations of four members of Bush’s Cabinet on Monday, a spokesperson said.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-InternationalNews&ao=125591">Colin Powell: A ‘great American story'</a>
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/ 12 November 2004
The United States government on Friday ordered airlines to turn over personal information about passengers who flew within the US in June in order to test a new system for identifying potential terrorists. The system, dubbed ”Secure Flight,” will compare passenger data with names on two government watch lists.
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/ 12 November 2004
Men’s advocacy groups throughout the United States are up in arms over a television commercial for cellphones that portrays fathers as dumb and dispensable. It shows a father perplexed by his small daughter’s homework before being humiliated and dispatched from the kitchen by the exasperated child and mother.
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/ 12 November 2004
President George W Bush has picked Alberto Gonzales, the White House lawyer who advised him he could disregard the ”obsolete” Geneva conventions, as the United States’s new attorney general. News of Gonzales’s nomination, replacing John Ashcroft, who resigned on Tuesday, was poorly received by US human rights groups, which said he had shown scant regard for the importance of international human rights law.
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/ 11 November 2004
Microsoft launched its own internet search engine on Thursday in a move aimed at challenging market leaders Google and Yahoo. The move marks a new strategy for Microsoft, which up to now has relied on the underlying technology of Yahoo and others for its MSN Search.
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/ 8 November 2004
It’s literally because he has an answer for everything that Ken Jennings is now rich and famous, having broken world records in a game-show winning streak that has Americans holding their breath. Jennings has won more than 65 games and correctly answered more than 2 000 questions since his first appearance on Jeopardy!.