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Showing posts from October, 2019

ADSL on its last legs in South Africa

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  By   Daniel Puchert Partially state-owned telecommunications company Telkom announced in its financial results for the year ending 31 March 2025 that its ADSL subscribers had more than halved to under 30,000. According to the company’s operational data, ADSL lines decreased from 64,959 in March 2024 to 29,770. This 54.2% decline highlights that the legacy broadband technology is slowly approaching the end of the road. Telkom’s ADSL business peaked at the end of March 2016 with 1.01 million subscribers — two years after fibre upstart Vumatel  broke ground in Parkhurst . What followed was a sharp decline in Telkom ADSL subscribers. Customers connected to its copper networks decreased by more than 500,000 over the next four years. This was partly driven by Telkom itself, which began actively switching off its copper network in some neighbourhoods. If it did not have fibre in the area, it would offer a “fixed line lookalike” wireless service that ran over its cellular ...
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South Africa: No Warm Welcome From Home Affairs At Beit Bridge

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We cannot have a Home Affairs department that is corrupt,’ declared President Cyril Ramaphosa in early October – while Barbara Dale-Jones was experiencing exactly that while travelling to Zimbabwe. As Ramaphosa visited the department’s head office in Pretoria, engaging staff and senior management on strategies to speed up visas and make it easier for visitors to enter the country, hundreds of Zimbabweans and South Africans experienced only frustration, corruption and prejudice at the hands of Home Affairs officials. Earlier this month, I travelled through the Beit Bridge border post from South Africa to Zimbabwe. The exercise took five hours in heat of more than 45 degrees Celsius. It was a horror and one that gave me a lot of time to reflect on what I was seeing. At first, the behaviour of the South African Home Affairs officials seemed like incompetence and laziness. They did not seem to have a properly functioning system in place. By the time I had crossed the bridge int...
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It's Woodward not Solskjaer who needs to be fired

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PREMIER LEAGUE  /  13 OCTOBER 2019, 4:00PM  /  OLIVER HOLT Ed Woodward is being blamed for Manchester United's decline. Photo: Jason Cairnduff/Reuters Under the aegis of the Glazer family, Manchester United have become a giant, suppurating mess of a football club. Blinded by the pursuit of cash, the club fleeces its fans and rakes in record revenues even as the team flails. The idea Old Trafford remains a Theatre of Dreams has become a joke. For some time, it has played host to a pageant of the mediocre and the dire. As United flounder in mid-table and approach the latest staging post in their fall from grace with the visit of reborn Liverpool next Sunday, speculation continues to grow about the future of manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and his replacement if he is fired. You’ve heard the names: Julian Nagelsmann, Massimiliano Allegri and Mauricio Pochettino have all been mentioned as candidates. It is said that if United lose to Jurgen Klo...
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There are days when 'my husband and I don't eat at all' - Families survive on one meal in drought-hit Zimbabwe

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2019-10-05 17:04 (File, Dan Kitwood/Getty Images) Multimedia    ·    User Galleries    ·    News in Pictures Send us your pictures   ·   Send us your stories Related Links Zimbabwe's leader begs for patience to fix ailing economy Zim ban on mobile money challenged in court Zim president: Our economy is dead In eastern Zimbabwe's parched Buhera district, Omega Kufakunesu's family has been forced to scale down daily meals to just a portion of vegetables and sadza, a thick maize-meal porridge. In the morning only the children get the porridge, and everyone skips lunch. "During the day we have wild fruit collected by the children, and at night we have smaller portions of sadza with vegetables," harvested from the communal village garden, said Kufakunesu, sitting outside her thatched round hut. A palmful of shumha, a drought-resistant wild fruit, is all she will eat during the day u...
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Which countries have the world’s largest coal reserves?

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  Visual Capitalist Elements   | September 15, 2021 | 8:58 am   Intelligence   Australia   USA   Coal   The Countries With the Largest Coal Reserves Cheap and abundant coal remains one of the largest sources of energy worldwide, even as governments set out goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While jurisdictions in Europe and North America have been phasing out coal use in power generation, it has been on the rise in Asia. China and India are scrambling to provide electricity to a growing population and relying on coal power plants to meet demands despite the environmental costs. SIGN UP FOR THE ENERGY DIGEST Sign Up This infographic takes a look into the  BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2021 , and the 11 countries that make up  89%  of the coal reserves globally. Coal Reserves, by Country While countries need to phase out coal by 2040 to achieve the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5ºC, consumption in key ...
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MOTORS MARINE MAY 7, 2021 Boat of the Week: This 171-Foot Super-Luxe Sportfishing Yacht Is the Largest in the World

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  The epic vessel is a 30-knot "battlewagon" designed to chase marlin, swordfish and sailfish. It's also decidedly lavish. By  HOWARD WALKER           Courtesy Vripack To hook the world’s biggest fighting fish, in the words of Chief Brody in the classic 1975 movie  Jaws , “You’re going to need a bigger boat.” Privately owned  fishing  boats won’t come any bigger than this astonishing 171-foot super-luxury sportfisherman, set to claim the title of “World’s Largest Sportfish Superyacht.” Designed by Dutch naval architects  Vripack , and soon to start construction at the Royal Huisman yard in the Netherlands, Project 406 as it’s currently codenamed, will be a 30-knot “battlewagon,” designed to chase marlin, swordfish and sailfish to the ends of the earth. “Project 406 is a sportfishing machine on steroids,” Vripack co-creative director Bart M. Bouwhuis told  Robb Report . “It has the proportions of a typical American sportfishing ...
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This New Ultralight Aircraft May Be World’s Fastest Single-Engine Business Jet

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  The speedy LAR-01's automotive interior adds comfort and luxury. Plus: The wings detach, so the jet can be stored in a home garage. By  MICHAEL VERDON           Courtesy Flaris The  Flaris  LAR-01 has a number of striking stats, including being a ton lighter (literally) than its competitors, along with an unusually short-field landing capability, and detachable wings. But its most impressive number is the 250-knot true air speed, which its designers say makes it the world’s fastest business jet among single-engine very light jets and turboprop aircraft. Flaris says recent tests “confirmed the assumptions made previously” about the effectiveness of multiple systems, including its Garmin G600 avionics and Flaris Flight Assistance System flight computer, as well as the landing gear and emergency parachute system. But it also claims more impressive stats like the 250-knot TSA at 10,000 feet. Its 6,000-feet-per-minute climb rate, adds the compan...
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