North West’s beleagured agricultural department has spent almost R2-million this year on the salaries of at least five officials who are sitting at home on suspension. Four agriculture department officials have been suspended on allegations of corruption, fraud and maladministration following a forensic audit last year.
The 550-bed Kimberley general hospital has won a number of awards for management and innovation, and is considered a case study in transformation. In the past six years, it has expanded from employing 38 fulltime doctors to 115, plus 40 community service doctors and 30 interns.
On the day we visited Bongani Hospital in Welkom, Free State, the CEO was frantically trying to decide what to do with a R12million winning Lotto ticket after the owner had just died in the hospital. Alida Zwiegelaar was very proud that her staff had been honest enough to hand over the ticket, particularly as the owner had not signed it.
The willingness of the courts to issue interdicts preventing newspapers from publishing has become a deeply disturbing trend. Last week’s order, obtained by MTN head Maanda Manyatshe in the Johannesburg High Court, was the third of its kind in the space of a year. Earlier, some Sunday newspapers were barred from publishing the Danish cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad, and an Oilgate report in the Mail & Guardian was blocked.
Iran has completed a new phase in its Arak heavy-water reactor plant, a presidential official said on Saturday, referring to part of Iran’s atomic programme which the West fears is aimed at producing bombs. The official said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would give a speech later in the day ”announcing that the heavy-water project has become operational”.
Uganda has agreed to a conditional cessation of hostilities with rebels to end a brutal 19-year insurgency in the north of the country. The deal is dependent on the Lord’s Resistance Army sending its fighters to assembly points in southern Sudan and northern Uganda where they could be monitored.
Not long after puny Pluto was stripped of its planethood, Janis Robinson started selling ”Pluto is a planet” T-shirts on the internet. Robinson, who said she ”rolled her eyes” after Pluto got the boot, hopes her buyers will send a message that kicking out the far-out rock is downright goofy.
A government decision to appeal a Durban High Court ruling forcing it to provide anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment to prisoners infected with HIV/Aids is ”a matter of principle”, the health department said on Friday. ”It is not about [government] refusing to give people treatment,” said director-general of the health department Thamsanqa Mseleku.
A year after Hurricane Katrina pounded the Gulf Coast and left New Orleans in ruins, United States President George Bush is still grappling with the political fall-out from a federal response widely viewed as inept. As the storm’s August 29 anniversary approaches, memories are being rekindled of corpses and debris piling up in the streets and desperate victims pleading for help from rooftops.
The European Union is to mount the biggest military operation in its history after agreeing on Friday to commit more than 7Â 000 ground troops for a United Nations mission policing the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire. The EU, at a meeting of its foreign ministers in Brussels, also agreed to send a further 2Â 000 specialist forces, mainly providing naval and air support.