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/ 5 November 2007
Attribute it to his yoga, but there is a sublime zen that surrounds former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano. The only fracture in his aura appears as we stand in his hotel elevator at the end of our interview: "Well, if the West is concerned about China’s human rights record, then perhaps African countries should reconsider trading with America because of their war in Iraq and their torture of prisoners in Guantanamo," he says.
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/ 5 November 2007
While the United Nations Millennium Development Goals aim to empower women and eradicate poverty, Southern African inheritance practices are having the opposite effect — leaving widows impoverished, maligned and separated from their own children, says a recent study out of Mozambique.
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/ 5 November 2007
Multinational drug companies are targeting doctors in developing countries with dinners and lavish gifts, such as air conditioners, washing machines and down payments on cars, as incentives to prescribe their drugs, a new report revealed this week. The report from Consumers International says that self-regulation by the multinational drug giants has failed.
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/ 5 November 2007
Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF party and the opposition MDC were the "closest they have been" to reaching an agreement over key sections of a new constitution this week, but rowed over Western sanctions and presidential term limits. Officials on both sides involved in the talks, mediated by President Thabo Mbeki, report that they have agreed to a set of reforms, further to electoral changes agreed in September, which would form the basis for a new constitution by next year.
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/ 5 November 2007
A group of French charity workers arrested in Chad on child kidnapping charges went to extraordinary lengths to keep their adoption operation under wraps, it emerged. A total of 17 Europeans have been charged in connection with a bid to smuggle more than 100 children out of eastern Chad to France, where they were to have been adopted by host families.
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/ 5 November 2007
The listed property sector has rebounded strongly and is now at the levels prior to the sell-off on the back of the interest rate hike in October. Despite higher interest rates the listed property sector is up 38% on last year, confounding analysts who expected softer capital returns in the present environment, writes Maya Fisher-French.
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/ 5 November 2007
Priceless human capital has left South Africa. The Homecoming Revolution and skills-hungry employers are trying to get it back. Global South Africans (GSA), a complementary initiative by the International Marketing Council, is harnessing the capital where it now resides. The GSA project is being piloted in the United States.
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/ 5 November 2007
Oil surged to another record high this week, passing the $93-a-barrel mark after Mexico briefly halted one-fifth of its production and the dollar dropped. Analysts are expecting oil to hit $100 in the near future if the price rises continue as strongly as they have in recent days.
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/ 5 November 2007
‘It’s no use — the women are in eruption. And those who have until now been simmering quietly in the backseats of the sedans are now steaming furiously …" Though DH Lawrence surely wouldn’t mind adding that bit of a modern twist to his lines, the phalanx of muftis, <i>shayks</i> and religious personages of Mayfair and Fordsburg surely would.
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/ 5 November 2007
This is a side of life the Burmese military junta might prefer you did not see: girls who appear to be 13 and 14 years old paraded in front of customers at a nightclub where a beauty contest thinly veils child prostitution. Tottering in stiletto heels and miniskirts, young teenage girls criss-crossed the dance-floor as part of a nightly "modelling" show at the Asia Entertainment City nightclub on a recent evening in Rangoon.