China risks damaging its global credibility if it does not tackle its food and drug quality problems, an official newspaper said amid a series of health scares. China’s safety failings have drawn world attention since mislabelled chemical exports were found in cough syrup in Panama and pet food in the United States.
A three-year-old British girl was freed on Sunday four days after being kidnapped in Nigeria, and her mother said the toddler was in good health except for mosquito bites. Gunmen had snatched Margaret Hill from the car in which she was being driven to school while it was stuck in traffic on Thursday morning in Port Harcourt.
South Korean KJ Choi captured his second title in the last five weeks with a three-stroke victory at the Tiger Woods invitational tournament on a sweltering Sunday at the Congressional Country Club. Choi steadied himself after a shaky mid-round stretch when he bogeyed the 10th, 11th and 13th.
Second seeds Cara Black of Zimbabwe and Liezel Huber of South Africa won their second Wimbledon women’s doubles title in three years defeating Slovenian Katarina Srebotnik and Japan’s Ai Sugiyama on Sunday. The African pair came from a set down to win 3-6 6-3 6-2 and capture their second grand slam title of the year.
A Pakistani Special Forces commander was killed after coming under heavy fire from militants holed up inside the Red Mosque in Islamabad early on Sunday. Islamist rebels shot Lieutenant Colonel Haroon Islam and another soldier as they laid bombs along the perimeter wall of the besieged mosque at 1.30am.
About 260 000 workers in the metal and engineering sector are due to launch a strike on Monday over a wage dispute, unions said on Sunday. The open-ended strike will affect more than 9 000 firms, including Bell Equipment and the Scaw Metals Group.
United States President George Bush’s hopes for making progress with his Iraq strategy suffered a double blow when there was an upsurge in violence over the weekend. Twenty-three Iraqi army recruits were killed on Sunday the day after a truck bomb killed 150 people in Armili.
This is not a good time to be in a deckchair on a pavement on Fifth Avenue next to Central Park. It’s hot and disgustingly muggy and when you are not sitting in a pool of sweat, you are being drenched by torrential rain accompanied by flashes of lightning. The conditions in New York are so extreme they are almost biblical, which is appropriate because the people gathered on the pavement are here on the 21st-century equivalent of a pilgrimage.
With south/south trade strategically growing in importance, India is shaping into one of South Africa’s most important trading partners. Already we have witnessed the successful entry into South Africa of Indian conglomerates such as the Tata group and Ranbaxy, while South African companies seem set to make their mark in India.
Getting into the headquarters of JHC, the Johannesburg Housing Company, is like breaking into Fort Knox, with access control devices on myriad doors. In fact, as we pass through the last door, I realise it actually is Fort Knox — at least according to its name plate. The man at the centre of this African fort is Taffy Adler, JHC’s chief executive. And JHC’s objective could not be more dissimilar to its office’s American namesake.