South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost sovereign state in Africa. It is bounded on the south by 2,798 kilometers of coastline of southern Africa stretching along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, on the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, and on the east by Mozambique and Swaziland, and surrounding the kingdom of Lesotho. South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world by land area, and with close to 53 million people, is the world's 24th-most populous nation. It is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World or the Eastern Hemisphere.
South Africa is a multiethnic society encompassing a wide variety of cultures, languages, and religions. Its pluralistic makeup is reflected in the constitution's recognition of 11 official languages, which is among the highest number of any country in the world. Two of these languages are of European origin: Afrikaans developed from Dutch and serves as the first language of most white and coloured South Africans; English reflects the legacy of British colonialism, and is commonly used in public and commercial life, though it is fourth-ranked as a spoken first language.
"Weekend" is a song from 1979 by Dutch band Earth and Fire. It was written by guitarist Gerard Koerts for the album Reality Fills Fantasy.
"Weekend" was released by Earth and Fire as a single in November 1979 and reached the number one spot in the singles charts in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark and Portugal.
Weekend was first covered by the Swedish group Chips on their eponymously titled debut-album. Originally, the version was recorded in 1980, but was only available on the album's first printed issues, as all subsequent releases (now called "Sweets'n Chips") replaced the song with the track "Good Morning". It wasn't until the release of the 1997 Greatest Hits-album "20 bästa låtar" that the song became widely available again. The B-Side on the single was the Instrumental track "Tokyo".
"Weekend" was also covered by German techno group Scooter as "Weekend!". It was released in February 2003 as the first single from their 2003 album The Stadium Techno Experience. The single reached number 2 in the German Media Control Charts and was also a top-10 single in Norway, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden.
Weekend is the eighth album by Australian indie rock/electronic band Underground Lovers, the band's first after a 12-year hiatus. It followed a reunion for Sydney and Melbourne performances at the 2009 Homebake festival and the release of their 2011 retrospective album, Wonderful Things. A Rubber Records media release said: "This led to sporadic carefully selected shows and the realisation that the band still had something to say."
"The moment we got back together it clicked", lyricist and vocalist Vincent Giarrusso told The Courier-Mail. "We did one rehearsal, we had six or seven song ideas and we went to the studio to record them. The first four songs on the album are from that initial recording and some of those are first takes. The song 'Can For Now', what you are hearing is the first time we played it." The band also reunited with producer Wayne Connolly, producer of their 1997 album Ways T' Burn, to get the guitar sounds they wanted.
Giarrusso said the album was inspired by the energy of director Jean-Luc Godard's 1960s cinema hit Weekend, and Godard's film was used in their video for "Au Pair".
Weekend was an English language weekly newspaper in Ceylon published by Independent Newspapers Limited, part of M. D. Gunasena & Company. It was founded in 1965 as the Weekend Sun and was published from Colombo. In 1966 it had an average net sales of 45,000. It had an average circulation of 48,590 in 1973. The paper later changed its name to Weekend.
By 1973/74 the Independent Newspapers publications had become vocal critics of Sirimavo Bandaranaike's government. The government sealed Independent Newspapers' presses and closed it down on 19 April 1974 using the Emergency (Defence) Regulations. Independent Newspapers resumed publication on 30 March 1977 but the three year closure had taken its toll. Faced financial problems Independent Newspapers and its various publications closed down on 26 December 1990.