The traffic department, in its wisdom, has decided to solve the problem of congestion on the N1 corridor between the crucial Gauteng centres of Johannesburg and Tshwane (still known to most people as Pretoria) by turning the former speed freak outside lane into an exclusive lane for vehicles with more than one passenger.
If it can reasonably be defined as a political philosophy or rhetorical brand that sticks up for the common person against the elite, why is it that “populism” is so widely denigrated? When American liberals speak of Hugo Chávez as a populist, it is not a term of endearment.
It’s 10am on a stiflingly hot Monday morning and I am in a delivery room with one of the unluckiest mothers on the planet. She is Dahara Laouali, and at the moment she is lying on a narrow, dusty hospital trolley pushing her baby into the world. Although the birth is imminent, Dahara is making no noise at all. This is Niger, where the tradition is that mothers labour in silence.
Samantha Galliet is best known as "that woman who took on Discovery". Diagnosed with breast cancer at 29, Galliet faced a woman’s worst nightmare. She had a particularly aggressive strain of breast cancer called Her2. Fortunately for Galliet there had been a breakthrough in drug therapy for this type of cancer and her chances of survival were dramatically increased by the availability of a new drug called Herceptin.
When the Cabinet is handed the final version of the department of trade and industry’s Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Codes, small business will be watching to see how government intends to regulate them. Governments have always been keen to regulate business. But one would struggle to find an intervention more subtle, far-reaching and — here’s the rub — more complicated than the BEE codes.
While President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is busy running a high-voltage campaign against the United States and its policies, back home citizens are wondering if he will ever make good on an election promise to crack down on the corrupt and distribute Iran’s vast oil revenues more equitably.
Chad’s oil industry, with its output of 160 000 barrels a day, is tiny compared with Venezuela and Russia. But Chad is looking to exert more control over its natural resources. The President, Idriss Déby, recently announced he was kicking United States oil giant Chevron and Malaysian player Petronas — who together own 60% of the consortium running Chad’s -billion pipeline — out of the country for non-payment of taxes, a charge both companies deny.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, said on Wednesday that attempts to form a coalition government with the ruling Hamas movement had failed despite a mounting economic and security crisis. A joint programme agreed between his Fatah movement and Hamas last month had collapsed.
Venezuela’s campaign for a seat on the UN Security Council is reaching a climax in the face of fierce resistance from the Bush administration. Hugo Chávez has invested billions of dollars and a year of globetrotting in cementing his position as a global player.
It’s 2056. After a coup in Saudi Arabia, the new government announces it is cutting off supplies of its dwindling stock of oil to the United States. The White House responds by sending in the troops, but is forced to withdraw after Beijing says it will only continue shoring up the dollar if the military action is called off. The Americans have no choice but to comply. Fanciful? Ludicrous?