Turkey’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, a practising Muslim and former Islamist, was on Tuesday sworn in as the 11th President of the staunchly secular republic in a move that will be seen as a defining moment for the country. The appointment of the 56-year-old marked a victory for the governing Muslim democrats.
One minute he’s denouncing United States President George Bush; the next he’s accepting an invitation for a biopic from Oliver Stone. No one can accuse Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of leading a dull life. In Washington on Tuesday, the Iranian President was fielding questions about his prospects in Hollywood.
The Polish government is demanding billions of euros in compensation from Germany for cultural artefacts that were stolen or destroyed during World War II, after accusing Berlin of trying to rewrite history. The Foreign Minister, Anna Fotyga, said a list is being prepared of all the cultural treasures Poland lost to Germany.
A woman was extracted from her car with the Jaws of Life after an accident involving five cars, a truck and a fuel tanker on the N3 highway in Bedfordview on Tuesday afternoon. The road was closed in both directions after the accident, leading to major traffic disruptions in the area.
The Constitutional Court on Tuesday reserved judgement in an application by residents of derelict inner-city buildings in Johannesburg against a Supreme Court of Appeal order in favour of their eviction. Deputy Chief Justice Moseneke urged the residents and the Johannesburg municipality to reach a settlement.
The government needs to adopt a new approach to deal with Zimbabwean citizens flocking into South Africa, Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said on Tuesday. The South African Broadcasting Corporation reported her as saying one solution could be to provide them with temporary residence permits.
South African supermarket group Shoprite Holdings on Wednesday reported a 33,3% increase in diluted headline earnings per share from continuing operations to 194,3 cents for the year ended June from 145,8 cents a year ago. The group’s total dividend is envisaged to increase by 38,4% to 101 cents per share.
Employment equity, skills development and management control are vital indicators of broad-based empowerment, but they are also areas of low BEE progress. Equity transfer is still king, though this must change if BEE is going to be broad-based. This has emerged from the two baseline studies into BEE.
The earliest examples of women scientists come from Africa — in the persons of the Egyptian physician Merit Ptah, who practised medicine around 2700BC, and Zipporah, a physician who lived around 1500BC. Ancient Egyptian women were free to attend medical school with men or attend one exclusively for them at Sais.
Carren Ginsburg’s research ventures into areas where few women scientists have gone before. Not only is she combining two divergent disciplines of research, but her PhD study also has a strong emphasis on innovative statistical modelling techniques that have not yet been applied to longitudinal data analysis in the South African context.