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/ 15 November 2006
Expletives are scrawled across the classroom walls, the library ceiling has collapsed and up to 45 pupils cram into each filthy classroom — when the teachers turn up that is. But despite the shoddy state of her school, 14-year-old Constance Mpho has even bigger worries.
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/ 15 November 2006
The South African Reserve bank will remain resolute to keep inflation under control, and not hesitate to change monetary policy before Christmas if necessary, Governor Tito Mboweni said on Tuesday, signalling another rate hike.
The Reserve Bank has already raised its repo rate by 150 basis points since June to curb inflationary pressures, and most analysts expect more increases ahead.
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/ 15 November 2006
The operation was meticulously planned and had the benefit of pinpoint accurate intelligence. The van was travelling on a circuitous route through the backwater of Scranton in Pennsylvania, well away from the main interstate highway 80 that led to its destination, New York.
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/ 15 November 2006
The city of Los Angeles is principally famous for two things: glittering movies and suffocating smog. Now researchers have found that the two are not unconnected. A study by the University of California Los Angeles shows the film and television industry to be the second largest polluter in the Los Angeles area.
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/ 15 November 2006
The final issues are being sorted out between Alcan, the Canadian aluminium company, and South Africa over the building of a smelter at Coega in the Eastern Cape, Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa said on Tuesday. Briefing the parliamentary media, the minister said his government had been "in touch" with Alcan "quite a lot in the last two weeks".
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/ 15 November 2006
The government of Sierra Leone is faced with the challenge of stigma attached to HIV/Aids, which is derailing its efforts to supply antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to its targeted number of people living with the virus by the end of the year.
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/ 15 November 2006
Uganda has become the first country in Africa to try an HIV vaccine on a baby in an effort to find a solution to mother-to-child transmission. The lead investigator of the Makerere University John Hopkins University Research Collaboration (Mujhu), Francis Mmiiro, said the baby was born at Mulago Hospital last week.
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/ 15 November 2006
Another reason to quit: Smoking might increase the risk of contracting HIV, according to a study published in the August 21 online edition of the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections. Andrew Furber, a public health consultant at the South East Sheffield Primary Care Trust in the United Kingdom, and colleagues conducted a systematic review of studies examining tobacco smoking as a risk factor for either HIV infection or progression of the virus to Aids.
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/ 15 November 2006
African leaders have committed themselves to hold each other accountable for the implementation of the much-hailed New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad). However, five years on and questions have started to surface about the effectiveness and viability of the Nepad process.
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/ 15 November 2006
Sitting cross-legged on his hospital bed at Yanhee Hospital in Bangkok, South African Neil van der Merwe unwraps a layer of bandages to reveal a six-inch tube inserted into the inner part of his forearm. The contraption is being used to grow a penis, the final step in his transformation from woman to man. ”I wanted to do this a long time ago,” says the 35-year-old, who sports a thin goatee and has lived as a man for five years.