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/ 2 November 2007
The Department of Home Affairs is forging ahead with plans to introduce a smart-card identification system, Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said on Friday. ”It is clear to us that we have to move in this direction as quickly as possible,” she told a media briefing at Parliament.
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/ 2 November 2007
AngloGold Ashanti shut one of its larger mines in South Africa on Friday after a miner was killed in a rockfall as a miners’ strike to protest against the spate of mine deaths in the country loomed. AngloGold, the world’s third-biggest gold producer, shut its TauTona mine after the worker died in the early hours of Friday.
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/ 2 November 2007
President Thabo Mbeki devoted a large part of his speech to the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) on Friday to criticising the behaviour and ownership of the media. Speaking in Pniel, outside Stellenbosch, where the NCOP was holding a provincial sitting, he emphasised that the government has ”absolutely no intention to limit press freedom”.
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/ 2 November 2007
Drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) and HIV have merged into a double-barrelled pandemic that is sweeping across sub-Saharan Africa and threatening global efforts to eradicate both diseases, according to a report released on Friday. Overburdened health systems are unable to cope with the epidemic and risk collapse, says the report.
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/ 2 November 2007
Ernie Els’s miserable week continued with a second-round collapse at the Singapore Open on Friday, the South African’s 76 leaving him six-over for the tournament and likely to miss the cut. The world number four lost in a play-off to Australia’s Adam Scott here last year and came into the -million event as one of the favourites.
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/ 2 November 2007
The sight of frightened, bewildered children torn from their homes by wars or poverty is one of the most recurring and haunting faces of Africa. But the case of 103 African children who were to be flown out of Chad to Europe by a French group has touched raw nerves on the continent, where trafficking of minors is still widespread.
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/ 2 November 2007
Battles broke out again in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Friday killing at least one, wounding four and stoking the nation’s humanitarian crisis after nearly 90 000 people fled days of fighting earlier this week. Ethiopian forces supporting Somalia’s interim government are trying to crush Islamist-led rebels.
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/ 2 November 2007
The career of Martina Hingis ended in disgrace and tears on Thursday when she retired after testing positive for cocaine, an inglorious finale to a story that captivated world tennis for more than a decade. ”I have tested positive but I have never taken drugs and I feel 100% innocent,” the five-times Grand Slam champion told a news conference.
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/ 2 November 2007
The Department of Home Affairs has ditched the South African Post Office (Sapo) as the distributor of its documents because of inefficiency. Initially, the Sapo contract with the department to deliver documents went very well, Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula told a media briefing at Parliament on Friday.
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/ 2 November 2007
Rescuers worked on Friday on rescuing hundreds of thousands of people trapped by the worst floods ever recorded in Mexico’s southern state of Tabasco, with more than one million residents affected. The oil-rich state the size of Belgium is now 80% underwater, officials said, adding that they expect more rain in the next days.