Fabulous news: our little memory lapses, known as "senior moments", are not senior any more, they are any age. They are even hip, with a Homer Simpson name — "Doh moments"– and are nothing to do with gender or intelligence either, but everything to do with stress and busy lives. They happen up to 30 times a week, to anyone.
Satrix managers will be listing a new and exciting exchange-traded fund (EFT) at the end of the month. The Satrix Divi will track the FTSE/JSE Dividend Plus Index, comprising the 30 highest dividend-paying companies on the JSE (based on the McGregor BFA Survey), which is a consensus of one-year dividend forecasts made by stockmarket analysts.
It’s taken tears, anger, demonstrations, speeches and prayers. It’s taken court battles and HIV+ T-shirts worn with pride. But Aids advocacy and activism have taken a momentous path in the past few years. It was only five years ago that the Johannesburg General Hospital decided to close its HIV clinic.
Some of the world’s leading food manufacturers have begun marketing to children on social networking websites and internet chat rooms. Since new rules imposed by the British media regulator Ofcom made it difficult to advertise during children’s television programmes, brands such as McDonald’s, Starburst, Haribo and Skittles are using the internet to target British children.
Although Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s recent price cuts are projected to halve the state’s income in the short term and will further cripple the economy, business leaders remain reluctant to openly criticise his policies. A large proportion of businesses in Zimbabwe are expected to report losses within the next quarter, which will have a severe effect on the revenue generated by the state through corporate tax.
"Determined" is the adjective that seems to fit Linda Olga Nghatsane best. What else do you call a public health practitioner who built up a successful farm in just three years, all in order to combat malnutrition? Last week, her determination was recognised when she won not only the business entrepreneur award, but also the overall title of Shoprite Checkers/SABC2 Woman of the Year 2007.
Dengue fever is sweeping South-East Asia in an outbreak of the mosquito-borne virus that is already threatening to become the worst in almost a decade. Hospitals across the region are filling up and the number of deaths mounting, with no country left immune, from the richest, ultra-modern Singapore, to the poorest, such as Laos and Cambodia.
It’s a reminder that we live in a global world when in Britain you are as likely to be treated by a South African or a national of another developing country as you are by a British nurse. It’s a trend that the South African government is preparing to take steps to reverse, starting with Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s imminent trip overseas aimed at encouraging South African nurses to come back.
In a surprise move, Namibian Prime Minister Nahas Angula reshuffled 10 permanent secretaries — the government’s top public servants — this week to speed up delivery in key economic sectors and halt the rot in politically sensitive services such as health.
A couple of years ago a friend of mine from law school accosted me at a breakfast table in a Harare hotel. I introduced him to my breakfast meeting companion, the director of a Southern African regional NGO. Immediately after the introductions my erstwhile schoolmate charged at the NGO director: "You are going to give me a job in an NGO, aren’t you?" The NGO director recovered just enough to ask why my schoolmate wanted a job with an NGO.