Banks, which have been exposed in a major report as apparently benefiting from stratospheric fees, can expect to soon be tackled by an independent adjudicator. The banking industry can expect the same kind of shake-up that independent Pension Funds Adjudicator Vuyani Ngalwana has brought to the life industry.
This week’s Red Sea bombing has left the Bedouin people of the Sinai feeling three times injured. Four of their children were seriously injured, their tourism-dependent livelihoods are threatened, and once again they think they will be blamed for the bombs.
Friday night in Kingston, and at a house party high up in the hills overlooking the city, the first refrains of the dancehall track Tuck in Yu Belly ring out. Within moments the dance floor is packed. It is a scene as Jamaican as a plate of calaloo and salt fish, with one exception: all the revellers are male, and there is a reason why this party is up in the hills.
This week neuro-biologist Susan Greenfield asked Britain’s House of Lords a question that affects all of us, yet which I have never heard discussed by mainstream politicians: Is technology changing our brains? The context is the clicking, bleeping, flashing world of screens.
Minibus taxis, referred to as ”matatus”, have long been a ubiquitous feature of the Kenyan landscape, providing transport in cities — and linking urban and rural areas. But a revolution is under way in western Kenya: bicycle taxis are replacing motorised vehicles, their passengers perched on padded seats positioned above the back wheel.
United States President George W Bush, facing a summer of revolt from a nation that believes fiercely in its right to affordable petrol, on Tuesday unveiled plans to try to stop a rapid rise in prices at the pump. In a speech to the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington, Bush acknowledged that the high prices were hurting ordinary Americans as the holiday season approaches.
Britain’s top oil man, John Browne, warned on Tuesday that fear was driving the price of crude to artificially high levels, with untold consequences for the global economy. The BP chief executive said turbulence in Iran, Iraq and Nigeria was leading to continual speculation about oil shortages and there were ”all sorts of things that suggest it is getting worse”.
Instead of feeling behind the couch cushions for change, maybe the Friends of JZ should ask the Reverend Sun Myung Moon for a bit of financial assistance. After all, he gave Zuma an award as an ambassador for peace last October. And if he feels in need of some redemption, last year the Reverend Moon declared himself the Messiah and claimed to have redeemed the souls of Hitler and Stalin.
Terrorist bombs in sun-kissed holiday resorts have become a grimly familiar phenomenon of the post-9/11 years, but Egypt, hit for the third time in this bloody period, has had more than its share. Monday’s death toll at Dahab, an old oasis on the lovely Red Sea coast, was at least 24, with further fatalities likely among about 60 injured.
No one can deny that the late Brett Kebble had good taste: Ferraris, a couple of private jets, a portfolio of luxury properties, expensive art pieces and all the usual trappings of the billionaire lifestyle to which he aspired. He also had political friends on the payroll, something that will no doubt cause acute embarrassment for some.