Householders have been warned to expect a big rise in home insurance premiums after Britain’s two biggest insurers said they would increase rates to cover the impact of this summer’s flooding — predicted to cost £3,3-billion. Britain’s largest insurer, Norwich Union, said it was planning to introduce 10% increases — typically £35 to £40 a year — in buildings and contents premiums on all renewal notices sent out after August 6.
A week after the Kenyan Parliament passed a law compelling journalists to disclose their sources, pressure is mounting for President Mwai Kibaki to reject the punitive legislation. The new Kenya Media Bill, which was passed last week by 27 votes instead of the mandatory 30-member quorum, has come under heavy criticism from both the industry and the public, which perceive it as a deliberate attempt to gag the media, which has openly criticised the government for corruption.
British mining giant Anglo American has been accused of profiting from the persecution, intimidation and killing of miners in Colombia who oppose the company’s operations. The international charity War on Want says in a report released this week that Anglo American and its subsidiaries benefited from army operations in areas where the company is prospecting, which have forced families off their land and intimidated community leaders.
Last month Bidvest Bank was launched officially in South Africa, the latest project of diversified industrial giant Bidvest. Brian Joffe’s company appears to have taken the view that there’s nowhere to go but up, although Bidvest is taking a conservative approach. Joffe founded his empire 18 years ago with one acquisition, Chipkins, a catering services company.
Could one of the inventors of the webcam transform the economics of computing for the poor? In 1991, when he was a doctoral student at Cambridge, Quentin StaffordFraser hooked up a camera to monitor the department’s coffeepot so his fellow workers would know when it was fresh.
Amid the top-level dialogue, public debate and opulent functions dedicated to solving the scourge of violence against women and children, is it possible that we are losing sight of the obvious? Could we be suffering from the "bullshit baffles brains" syndrome instead of allowing common sense and reason to prevail?
With the spectre of price controls on private hospitals looming, market leader Netcare has called for self-regulation by the industry to ward off moves by government to set prices. Netcare found itself in the eye of a storm recently amid accusations that it benefited from non-transparent pricing and for not passing on rebates from suppliers to its customers.
The unfolding catastrophe in Iraq has condemned the political judgement of a president. But it has also condemned the judgement of many others, myself included, who as commentators supported the invasion. Many of us believed, as an Iraqi exile friend told me the night the war started, that it was the only chance the members of his generation would have to live in freedom in their own country.
As Thabo Mbeki heads into the twilight of his presidency, his legacy as a feminist is one he holds dear. That much is clear from his speeches and writings. Mbeki talks a great deal about women’s empowerment and he has walked the numerical talk. The deputy presidency, and more than half the premierships and cabinet posts, are occupied by women.
President Hugo Chávez has launched an intensive tour of South America to shore up Venezuela’s influence over the region and to loosen the grip of Western creditors. The socialist leader promised to buy up to -billion of Argentinian bonds and to help fund a -million gas plant, bolstering his reputation as a benefactor of Buenos Aires’s economic recovery.