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Is Cape Town storm 2018 worse than last year? |
The South African Weather Service has revealed key rainfall numbers as a result of the cold front that hit Cape Town, which left parts of the city reeling after significant rainfall ahead of the weekend.Roofs were blown off and buses overturned during a furious winter storm on Thursday night. The South African Weather ... |
"It was quite good rainfall, and widespread. There was quite a lot of damage reported as well," SAWS forecaster Wayne Venter told News24. |
It was the third front of the week. |
Villiersdorp rainfall is particularly important to Cape Town, as the biggest dam, Theewaterskloof, is situated there and benefited from the rainfall. |
"It's probably more because they also have the mountains there," said Venter of the rainfall near Theewaterskloof, which has a capacity of 480 188 megalitres when full. |
In 2017, eight people were killed when a massive storm made landfall. |
According to SAWS 2017 data, Cape Town saw less than 25mm of rain in May, but between 100mm and 200mm in June, above the average of 70mm. |
Videos revealed massive waves breaking in Sea Point and washing over the road. |
City of Cape Town data shows that the rain over the last week was beneficial to the dams, which registered an increase to 25.1%, from 21.1%, compared with 19.8% for the same period in 2017. |
SAWS data shows a lower rainfall probability on Saturday, and dry weather from Sunday to Wednesday, with temperatures climbing from the mid-teens to 26°C. |
"South-westerly winds will dominate that area. They can't lead to veld fires because they bring moist air from the ocean to that area," SAWS forecaster Bransby Bulo told News24.Following the devastating Cape Town storm in 2017, the cold front moved eastwards, causing gale-force winds which exceeded 90km/h, and resulted... |
Seven people were killed as the fires raged across the Eden Municipality - which includes Knysna and Bitou - between June 6-10. |
The gale-force winds made it difficult for firefighters to bring the blaze under control, and more than 10 000 people had to be evacuated as a result of the fires. |
Shareholders dislike big acquisitions. That probably explains the 10% drop in the Godrej Consumer Products Ltd (GCPL) stock last week, after it announced a Rs3,000 crore fund-raising plan to pay for acquisitions. Though no stranger to acquisitions, the company’s market capitalization is Rs7,700 crore, so the size of th... |
Is Sara Lee Corp.’s residual global business in its sights? Sara Lee is selling its international household and body care business, with Unilever Plc and Procter and Gamble Co. (P&G) having agreed to buy parts of the business. Businesses contributing around €1 billion (Rs6,740 crore) in revenue have been sold, and the ... |
What remains is the global shoe care, insecticides and non-European cleaning brands. Valuation would depend on profitability and growth prospects, but it would be reasonable to assume a floor valuation of around 1-1.2 times revenue. GCPL’s war chest appears a little inadequate for this acquisition. But GCPL also owns 4... |
Sara Lee’s residual global business is a possibility, but what seems more likely is Godrej buying out Sara Lee’s 51% stake in GSLL. When GCPL acquired the 49% stake in GSLL from group companies earlier this year, it issued equity as consideration. This equity had a market value of around Rs870 crore when the ratio was ... |
Even after paying for full control over GSLL, GCPL will have enough ammunition left for a big-ticket purchase. A large domestic acquisition would be appropriate as most of its acquisitions have been foreign. |
Global consumer majors have made India a key fixture in their emerging market plans. Their desire to sell to consumers at all income levels should worry home-grown companies, which have excelled in this area. If multinational companies decide to grow via acquisitions, it would be a bigger worry for Indian companies. |
In a market that is fast heading towards intense competition, this may be the time to fill up portfolio gaps before assets turn very expensive. Shareholders may fret for the moment, but unless GCPL overpays, inorganic growth is a smart way to fill up portfolio gaps. Dabur India Ltd has shown that with its successful ac... |
The Nature Conservancy is seeking a senior creative manager. In this role, you’ll direct the conservation org’s quarterly magazine. You’ll be “hands-on” working with a “small, collaborative team” and “work closely with the photo, production and editorial staffs.” Because digital magazines use less ink and paper, you’ll... |
The gig’s in Arlington and you can apply here. |
Prefer an SUV to a Prius? Perhaps one of these other jobs…. |
As of the time of this posting, there were 1295 jobs on our board. |
20th annual game is set for Dec. 28 on ESPN. |
Correction: This is the 21st annual Music City Bowl. |
No. 15 Mississippi State, Auburn, Missouri or South Carolina are the SEC teams that could end up in the 21st annual Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl. |
As for which team the SEC representative will face, that still remains very much up in the air. |
The Music City Bowl is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Dec. 28 (ESPN) at Nissan Stadium. The day the game is being played could affect which teams are selected. |
"Ideally, we would like to get a team that would have a pretty driveable fan base considering we're on Friday afternoon this year," Music City Bowl President & CEO Scott Ramsey said. "That is a key component. So I would circle teams like Mississippi State (6-4, 2-4), Auburn (6-4, 3-4) and possibly Missouri (6-4, 2-4). ... |
Missouri and South Carolina never have played in the Music City Bowl. |
The only time Auburn was here was in 2003 when it beat Wisconsin 28-14. |
Mississippi State beat Wake forest 23-17 in the 2011 game. |
Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas A&M are not in the mix because each has played in the bowl in one of the past three seasons. |
"While it's not a contractual obligation, it's more of a working rule of thumb that every bowl is going to try not to repeat with teams within a three-year window," Ramsey said. |
Bowl officials are keeping a close watch on how the Coastal Division in the ACC and the Big Ten's West Division play out. The other team in the Music City Bowl probably will come from one of those two divisions. |
"It's a little difficult because that Coastal Division in the ACC is really jumbled up," Ramsey said. "You've got Virginia, Duke, Miami, Pitt and Virginia Tech all kind of crammed up in there. They all play each other coming out and you don't know who's going to win that division. I think that will set the selection pr... |
Virginia Tech beat Alabama 38-7 in the inaugural Music City Bowl in 1998 played at Vanderbilt Stadium. |
"Virginia Tech (4-5, 3-3) is a driveable fan base that would like to come here and hasn't been here since 1998," Ramsey said. "That would be somebody we would be pretty interested in." |
No. 22 North Carolina State (6-3, 3-3), which is in the ACC Atlantic Division, is a long shot for the Music City Bowl. |
"If for some reason N.C. State could slip down into our mix, that is somebody that would be exciting for us," Ramsey said. |
Virginia beat Minnesota 34-31 in the 2005 Music City Bowl, and N.C. State lost to Vanderbilt 38-24 in the 2012 game. |
Duke (7-3. 3-3), Miami (5-5, 2-4) and Pitt (6-4, 5-1) have not played in the bowl. |
BARROW and Furness MP John Woodcock met the king of Saudi Arabia as he led a Labour fact finding mission to the country. |
King Salman received the Labour MPs at his presidential palace in Riyadh on Tuesday to discuss areas of co-operation between the kingdom and Great Britain. |
Mr Woodcock said he was “hugely struck by the king’s ambition to modernise the country” after being invited to lead the six-strong delegation of senior MPs and peers in his role as chair of Labour’s backbench foreign affairs committee. |
The week-long visit focussed on how the nations are sharing intelligence to deter terror attacks in the UK, concern over the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, examination of how the deeply conservative society is beginning to become more equal for women, and the longstanding defence partnership which sustains thousands of ... |
The parliamentarians divided their time between organisations based in the capital, Riyadh, and a day with the Saudi armed forces in the missile-damaged Saudi town of Najran close to the Yemeni border. |
Mr Woodcock said: “It was an honour to lead Labour’s delegation and converse with His Royal Highness King Salman on mutually important issues for our nations. |
“During our visit we were able to discuss desperately needed measures the Saudis can take to alleviate the terrible humanitarian crisis in neighbouring Yemen and understand better the crucial link between our nations’ intelligence agencies which has foiled many Jihadi terror plots on the UK mainland over the years. |
“The king was highly positive about the defence partnership between or nations which is good news for the thousands of BAE workers on the Typhoon programme in Lancashire whose jobs rely on Saudi orders. |
Accompanying the Labour backbencher on the delegation was former chairwoman of the National Women’s Commission Baroness Margaret Prosser, former defence ministers John Spellar MP and Kevan Jones MP, foreign affairs committee member Mike Gapes MP, and Stockton MP Paul Williams. |
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels Is Tough On Budgets Gov. Mitch Daniels put his state's finances in order just as other states headed for trouble. Now, some Republicans are promoting him as a possible presidential candidate. |
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels speaks in Washington on Feb. 11. |
In 2005 on his first day in office, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels signed an order ending collective bargaining with public employee unions. He said it freed him to turn over some state jobs to private contractors. |
Daniels was able to put his state's finances in order just as other states headed for trouble. Now, that's a big part of his reputation, and some Republicans are promoting him as a possible presidential candidate. |
Yet as he looks back on that budget-cutting moment with NPR's Steve Inskeep, Daniels says that he also added government jobs in the child welfare system. |
Mitch Daniels is a former budget director to President Bush. He won re-election as governor at the same time Indiana was carried by President Obama. Currently, he's pushing contentious conservative plans. Just last week, Democrats walked out of the Indiana state Legislature protesting a range of Daniels' plans, includi... |
Read the full transcript of Steve Inskeep's interview with Gov. Mitch Daniels below. |
INSKEEP: I want to ask something that a lot of people are confronting right now, as they deal with the federal deficit as well as state and local deficits that need to be closed. Are budget cuts — government budget cuts — worth it, even if they end up seriously costing a lot of jobs right now. |
DANIELS: The answer is yes. And in fact, I think, if we're gonna have more jobs in this country, now and in the future, we gotta get very serious about further significant reductions in the size of government. I very much think that — and I'm hardly alone in this — that substantial reductions in the size and cost of go... |
DANIELS: So we can do a whole lot of retrenching, and still be at the size we were just a very short time ago. I don't know anybody who thought that, for instance, the federal government was too small in, say, 2008. And, uh, you know as a starting point, we ought to get back there and keep going. |
INSKEEP: But when we're in a situation where the economy seems to be fragile and where people seem to be very worried about jobs. Just the other day, the economic numbers for the fourth quarter were revised and the reason that was given that they were revised downward was that state and local governments cut even more ... |
DANIELS: I think the most preposterous notion out there is that somehow if we borrow more money, and put more people on public payrolls, that this is in the long-term econ — or even short-term economic interests — of the country. What we need is government consuming a whole lot less of the money that is in the economy,... |
INSKEEP: Does that mean that there would have to be, if you had your way in the world, another year, another several years, of pain on the jobs front. |
DANIELS: I don't call it pain. You know, this whole idea of "pain." You know, we have the fewest state employees in Indiana now since 19 — we have fewer than we did in 1978. And yet I can prove it to you, 'cause we measure everything, that service levels are the best they've ever been in Indiana. Now we're delivering s... |
INSKEEP: I'm glad you mentioned privatizing government jobs. Some people will know that on, I believe, your first day in office — very early in your term in office in 2005, you ended collective bargaining with public employee unions. And one of the reasons you gave for that move was that it allowed you to privatize mor... |
DANIELS: 'Cause if there's a way to, to uh, deliver a given service as well or better at lower cost, I think you have not only an opportunity, but a duty to do that in public life. We treat this very much case by case. On that same first day, for instance, even as we were confronting a tremendous bankruptcy of state go... |
INSKEEP: It was a scandal, yeah. |
DANIELS: It was, and now we're winning national awards. Now, in that case, we doubled the size of the government workforce dealing with it, cut the caseloads, and began a process of reform and improvement. So we look at it case by case. But when it is possible to hire Hoosiers in the private sector, to perform a public... |
Now, you know, I want to make a very important point to you. It's been a stipulation of every such move we've made, that we protect the worker's job... the workers at least... in the sense that, the winning bidder has always been required to hire the incumbent worker. |
INSKEEP: They get first crack at the jobs. |
INSKEEP: People are formally laid off, but they have an opportunity to get another job. |
DANIELS: Not even formally laid off. They are given the opportunity to leave state government, go to a private employer — which, incidentally, has been the choice in a high, high percentage of the cases. |
INSKEEP: Same salary and benefits? |
DANIELS: Usually better. And more upward mobility. But again, it's the employee's choice. But we always protect the workers. Um, you know, it's a simple concept, but I think overlooked too often. The job of government is to deliver necessary services as well and effectively as possible — not necessarily to deliver them... |
INSKEEP: Well, what does that say about your political philosophy that you would do those two things simultaneously — end collective bargaining with unions and move towards privatization — at the same time that you're hiring more child welfare workers. Are you a pragmatist? What's the word for it? |
DANIELS: You pick the word. I certainly believe in limited government but protecting children against injury abuse is certainly inside my sphere of things that the government should do. Then the question again becomes, alright, what's the most effective way to do that. You know, on about the seventh day, the new fellow... |
INSKEEP: What did they bargain over? |
DANIELS: Well, there was all these work rules. |
DANIELS: And that's really why I took the action. You couldn't, uh, change the personnel rules. We wanted to pay — we do pay — the best workers a whole lot more, as you would in most enterprises, than the worst workers. We wanted to change technology. We wanted to be able to, uh, reorganize government — that child prot... |
INSKEEP: At the same time, the last time you may have made national headlines in the last few days was for telling your Republican legislature to back off on what was seen as an anti-union measure. |
DANIELS: Very different now, of course. It was a private sector Right to Work bill — very, very legitimate issue, uh, and uh — as I've said many times, and, uh — but a big one. And I had two reasons. I've had exactly the same position on this from the first time the idea surfaced. |
One, if you're going to suggest a change that big, you ought to not spring it suddenly on the public and the legislature. You ought to go out and develop the idea, advocate the idea, if possible, have an election and let people express their viewpoint on the idea. That's how we've made six years of big change in Indian... |
INSKEEP: You want to change the education system in Indiana. |
DANIELS: That's part of it — and the criminal justice system, and local government. And we want to preserve our fiscal solvency, without raising taxes. And now, all of that will be, at a minimum, a lot more difficult. |
So, those were my reasons. I believe that the Right to Work issue is a perfectly appropriate one for Indiana to look at. It does cost us jobs to be in the situation we're now in. But the right way to do it is to have a full and fair airing of this, let both sides bring their facts and arguments, and then, maybe, take i... |
INSKEEP: This is reminding me of a speech you gave earlier this month, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, at which you told conservative activists, first, that you needed to build large majorities for what you wanted to do, not just win, and also said to them — I believe I'm getting the quote correct — "p... |
DANIELS: I was talking at that time about what I believe is the single biggest and really, transcendent, problem facing the country — which is the threat posed by the debts we have amassed and that are, that are on their way. |
I don't think this is a ideological debate. It's a mathematical fact that, to me — love to be shown that I'm wrong — that the nation will not survive in the form we've known it, if we don't address this. And that's gonna mean very, very big changes, at least relative to the caliber that we've seen in Washington. |
INSKEEP: You're basically saying, we're going to blow our credit, or someone's going to move in and take over, that's basically what you're saying, if we don't deal with it? |
DANIELS: Well, if we go as broke as we're on track to go, we will have a permanently stunted economy. The dream, the American dream of upward mobility, of a prosperous middle class, goes out the window, without question. Along with it, inevitably, I think, will go much of our liberty, because in the free-for-all over w... |
And all I was saying at that particular talk was, that if you believe that — if you believe that our republic literally hangs on our addressing this issue — then we're going to want to try to unify and gather together as many people as we can to make this change of that dimension. And to do that means, by definition, y... |
INSKEEP: You have to compromise. |
DANIELS: You might. You might. I think I said at that time that — you know — I laid out as a for instance what I thought the right way forward was. Um, but if we can't get there the single best way, make me an offer, show me an alternative. Maybe I'll take the second best or third best way — as opposed to — I guess wha... |
INSKEEP: How are Congress and the White House doing on that score, if compromising or unifying is what you need to do? How are they doing right now? |
DANIELS: I think it's way to soon to say. And so I'm hopeful. I'm very disappointed — I can't say otherwise — that the President, I think, defaulted on this question, and, again, don't take it from me, I haven't seen a single commentator really say anything else. |
INSKEEP: You mean with the budget that he put out? |
DANIELS: Yeah, it was really not at all in keeping with realities that we're facing, and uh, but, fine. That doesn't mean he can't engage, uh, himself or be engaged in the kind of serious action that needs to happen. |
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