Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is not just economics, but a matter of life or death, said Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to the United Nations secretary general. The MDGs, approved by almost every government in the world at the UN’s Millennium Summit in 2000, include such targets as halving extreme poverty, reversing the spread of HIV/Aids and reducing child mortality.
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It does not come much bigger than Germany vs Argentina — a match-up steeped in World Cup history that will bring the host country to a standstill on Friday. The quarterfinal clash in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium will evoke memories of 1986 and 1990, when West Germany and Argentina faced each other in successive World Cup finals.
Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip launched on Wednesday in a bid to free a kidnapped soldier could escalate into a wider conflict, observers warned. The crisis has saddled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with the severest test of his premiership, but as dozens of tanks and troops poured into the southern Gaza Strip, officials were unable to say how or when the operation would end.
If sport is a metaphor for life, then the passion and pain of the struggling West Indies cricket team is an apt reflection of the region that will welcome the 2007 ICC World Cup. Long gone are glory days when the islands in the sun churned out terrorising fast bowlers like the late Malcolm Marshall and master blasters like Viv Richards.
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Ghana’s World Cup dreams were shattered by reigning champions Brazil, but the Black Stars played well against some top football teams and served notice of what might happen on African soil in 2010. A three-week Cinderella run ended on Tuesday in a 3-0 second-round loss to Brazil.
The South African Congress of Trade Unions is concerned that the latest Quarterly Employment Statistics (QES) again show only very slow growth in formal employment, despite the growth in the economy in the past six months, it said in a statement on Wednesday. According to the QES, formal employment rose by about only 300Â 000 in the year to March 2006.
The JSE was a mixed back just after noon on Wednesday, with players switching out of resources — the recent stars of the market — and into banks and retailers which were sold down sharply. Overall, the air was one of caution ahead of the US Federal Open Market Committee decision on interest rates due on Thursday night.
EADS co-chief executive Noel Forgeard was being questioned on Wednesday by France’s parliamentary finance committee on why he sold millions of euros’ worth of shares in the European aerospace group just before it announced delays in deliveries of its Airbus A380 superjumbo.
The recent hawkish statements by the central bank on inflation seem to have been backed up as the consumer price index excluding mortgage rate changes for metro and other areas, which is used by the South African Reserve Bank for its inflation target, was up 4,1% year-on-year (y/y) in May after a 3,7% y/y increase in April, according to Statistics South Africa numbers on Wednesday.
The increase in South Africa’s consumer price index excluding mortgage rate changes (CPIX) for metro and other areas, which is used by the South African Reserve Bank for its inflation target, was up 4,1% year-on-year in May after a 3,7% y/y increase in April, Statistics South Africa said on Wednesday.