A surge in prices of basic commodities and a sharp slide by the Zimbabwe dollar on the parallel market in past weeks could undo a fresh initiative by President Robert Mugabe to halt the economy’s free fall, further putting pressure on his grip on power, analysts said.
The war crimes trial of the former president of Liberia Charles Taylor could start in The Hague in January next year, a court official in the Sierra Leonean capital Freetown said on Wednesday. Harpinder Athwal, a special assistant to the court’s prosecutor, said the prosecution had handed over 32 000 pages of evidence to Taylor’s defence team.
Hamas has made a major political climbdown by agreeing to sections of a document that recognise Israel’s right to exist and a negotiated two-state solution, according to Palestinian leaders. In a bitter struggle for power, Hamas is bowing to an ultimatum from the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, to endorse the document drawn up by Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails.
An angry United States President George Bush rounded on the two remaining members of Washington’s ”axis of evil” yesterday, as he dismissed ”absurd” suggestions that the US presents the greatest threat to world stability. At a summit with the European Union in Vienna, Bush made clear that he believes Iran and North Korea pose the most serious danger when he warned them not to test his patience.
This month sees the launch of the revived news agency of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) — a move that hopes to put more information into global circulation, but which also highlights problems in African initiatives. The NAM service comes into being seven months after a meeting of its member countries’ information ministers.
South Africans, it is fair to say, are frightened by China. We complain about the cheap imports that are doing South African garment workers out of their jobs, we fret about the "insatiable" demand for natural resources, and the re-ordering of influence on the rest of the continent. And when we are really nervous, we talk about drug gangs that trade smuggled abalone for mandrax in the coastal villages.
South Africa’s number of dollar millionaires rose by nearly 16% last year, joining three other countries with the fastest-growing population of the super-rich in the world, <i>SAGoodNews.co.za</i> reported on Wednesday. Global millionaire numbers totalled 8,7-million in 2005, an increase of 6,5% on the previous year.
The location of Alyn Hospital on the outskirts of Jerusalem is so idyllic it could be out of the famous tale, Heidi. Nestled on a hilltop enclosed in pine-groves and wild daffodils, the sound of birdsong and children’s giggles allow one momentarily to forget the reality inside the hospital’s walls — the damaged and deformed children who are its patients.
The manne would like to commend African National Congress Youth League president Fikile Mbalula for his latest online missive in which he exhorts us to ”double our efforts” in the fight against HIV and Aids. Not only would a doubling of the state’s efforts put a whole 200Â 000 people on anti-retroviral treatment, it would leave only 4,5-million infected people in the hands of Teutonic snake-oil salesmen and
Click on image for full-size view.