Ralph Ginzburg, a scandalous editor and publisher of Eros, the magazine ”of sexual candour”, who was convicted in the 1960s for sending it through the mail, has died of cancer, media reports said on Friday. Ginzburg died on Thursday at the age of 76 in New York.
Wage negotiations between the National Petroleum Employers’ Association (NPEA) and the trade union Solidarity have deadlocked, NPEA spokesperson Alfie Ngubo said in a statement. ”Although the NPEA made a settlement offer of a 6,5% wage increase on basic wages, … they were unfortunately not able to resolve the dispute,” he said.
The documentary on South African President Thabo Mbeki, recently rejected by the state broadcaster, the South Africa Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), sounds like ”something of a left-wing hatchet job”, official opposition communications spokesperson Dene Smuts said on Friday.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Friday rebuffed calls to declare a state of emergency to stop the country’s economic freefall as it ”would send the wrong signals”. Instead, the cash-strapped country will ”soldier on” and pursue its policy of finding financial partners in Asia, rather than depend on Western aid, Mugabe told the state-owned Herald newspaper.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has painted a gloomy picture of the war-battered country’s health sector, press reports said on Friday, with the country now having just 34 doctors, or just one per 80 000 people. In the late 1980s, there were 400 doctors, she was quoted as telling a just-concluded meeting of aid donors.
The South African government should investigate the disappearance of Pakistani national Khalid Mehmood Rashid, Amnesty International said on Friday. In a letter to President Thabo Mbeki, Amnesty International expressed concern that South African government officials may have participated in the ”enforced disappearance and the return of the Pakistani national”.
England were ill prepared for the World Cup and will not win the trophy until the Football Association undergoes radical changes, said an Englishman who has lifted the top prize in rugby. ”The FA need to take a long hard look at themselves. Do they even know what has to be done?” said former England rugby coach Clive Woodward.
Residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs hit by Israeli air strikes overnight vowed on Friday to stand by Hezbollah, despite rising casualties from attacks triggered by its capture of two Israeli soldiers. The raid on the guerrilla group’s stronghold in the south of the capital killed three people and wounded 40.
Comedian Red Buttons, winner of a best-supporting-role Oscar for <i>Sayonara</i> (1958) with Marlon Brando, died in Los Angeles on Thursday at 87, his spokesperson said. Buttons, whose real name was Aaron Chwatt, died of circulation problems that he had suffered from for several years.
World-renowned mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson has died in the American state of New Mexico after a years-long battle with breast cancer, opera officials said there on Saturday. Lieberson was known internationally as a captivating "arch-maverick" of an opera singer.