South Africa’s recent upbeat assessment of job growth is not a true reflection of trends in the country’s workforce, say critics who contend that gaps in official employment data undercut the government’s rosy claims. Statistics South Africa reported last week that there were 544Â 000 new jobs in the year to March and noted a ”slightly upward trend” in employment.
Nato will assume responsibility for security across the whole of Afghanistan from Thursday when it takes command in the east from United States-led coalition forces, a senior Nato official said on Tuesday. Nato’s International Security Assistance Force already commands forces in the north, west and south, as well as in the capital, Kabul.
Militants who led a deadly attack on a military convoy escorting oil workers in the restive south also abducted 25 Nigerian petroleum-industry employees, the leading oil firm in Africa’s biggest producer said on Tuesday. The hostage takers hadn’t made any ransom demands earlyon Tuesday after the attack and seizure a day earlier.
The foreign ministers of South Africa and the Dominican Republic on Tuesday signed a declaration of intent in Pretoria to improve trade relations between the two countries. Foreign Affairs Minister Carlos Morales Troncoso of the Dominican Republic said his country had decided to establish a diplomatic mission in Pretoria.
Angola on Tuesday launched a voter-education programme ahead of its first post-war polls due next year with the prime minister warning against foreigners being registered for the key election. ”We have to be careful that those who do not fulfil the conditions required by law to vote are not registered,” Prime Minister Fernando da Piedade Dias Dos Santos said, kicking off the campaign in the oil-rich nation.
There is an urgent need for civil society in South Africa to join the fight against HIV/Aids, the South African Council of Churches said on Tuesday. ”This pandemic is destroying lives. We want to save lives, but we can’t do it on our own,” the Reverend Desmond Lesejane said. ”The struggle for treatment is not just an issue for the Treatment Action Campaign. It affects everyone.”
President Thabo Mbeki — on behalf of South Africa — has congratulated his Zambian counterpart Levy Mwanawasa on his re-election. ”The government and people of South Africa join the international community in welcoming the outcome of the recently held presidential, parliamentary and local elections in Zambia,” the Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Tuesday.
Many men who pay for sex are already in relationships, the findings of a small United Kingdom study show. The study ”raises awareness of the risks taken by men who pay for sex, and the risks they are also placing on their partners,” co-author Dr Tamsin Groom, a specialist registrar in sexual and reproductive health.
American John Mather credited a team of hundreds of scientists and engineers for helping him and George Smoot do the research that won them the 2006 Nobel Prize for physics on Tuesday. Mather and Smoot won the prize for their work with a satellite that provided increased support for the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.
Fugitive businessman Jacob ”Kobi” Alexander, accused in the United States of hatching a scheme to pocket millions of dollars by secretly manipulating stock options, was granted bail by a Namibian court on Tuesday. Alexander was arrested on September 26 in Windhoek at the request of the FBI after at two-month manhunt.