Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand is hoping to pinpoint the gene sequences that inactivate the virus that causes hepatitis B, an illness carried by more than 380-million people worldwide, the university said on Thursday. Wits said that it is using new technology to try to stop hepatitis B from recurring in the body.
Think of Aids in Africa and the odds are that you do not visualise anything like the infectious-disease care clinic in Gaborone, Botswana — a place of life, not death. Several hundred patients turn up each day, and increasingly they come not on stretchers or in wheelchairs but on foot.
Marks and Spencer shares tumbled on Thursday after the British tycoon Philip Green dropped his proposed takeover offer for the group, ratcheting up the pressure on its new management to deliver results. The billionaire retail magnate abandoned a third informal offer for the century-old British retailer late on Wednesday.
Niger’s Prime Minister, Hama Amadou, was unhurt when a military helicopter he was travelling in crashed on Wednesday in the east of the country, a source close to him said. Amadou was on a campaign tour for July 24 municipal elections when the crash occurred at Magaria, about 100km south of Zinder.
Swarms of locusts have arrived in northeast Senegal, sources reported on Wednesday, invading earlier than in previous years and threatening crops during the growing season. On Monday Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade wrote to the Group of Eight industrialised countries, calling on them to declare war on the locusts.
President Mwai Kibaki has declared a national disaster in drought-stricken parts of Kenya, calling for nearly -million in emergency aid from abroad to feed about 3,3-million Kenyans facing food shortages. The country will need an estimated 156Â 000 tons of food aid in the next six months, Kibaki said on Tuesday.
United States President George Bush on Wednesday renewed his election-year appeal for a controversial constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage after that effort suffered a Senate defeat. ”I am deeply disappointed that the [amendment] was temporarily blocked in the Senate,” he said in a statement.
Experts called on Thursday for urgent work on HIV-killing gels that could help protect women who can’t rely on condoms, while democracy icon Nelson Mandela told the world not to ignore tuberculosis (TB) in its battle against Aids. TB is a common diseases that attacks Aids patients after their immune systems have been destroyed.
One of the Boeremag treason trial accused told the Pretoria High Court on Wednesday he is not the ”monster” he is made out to be. ”At the start of the trial we were portrayed as these vicious barbarians who had no respect for human lives and drove around planting bombs everywhere,” testified Gerhardus ”Vis” Visagie.
Inspectors are probing a North West farmer on child labour allegations after a 13-year-old boy was injured while allegedly working on his farm, the Department of Labour said on Wednesday. Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana said: ”Child labour is unacceptable — it destroys childhood.”