Unrest in Africa. Mideast insurgency and terrorism. Iran’s nuclear brinkmanship. Russian pressure politics. South American resource nationalism. Piece by piece, the global energy puzzle reveals a bleak horizon for a world frantically searching for secure oil and gas supplies.
Eleven-year-old Nuno de Oliveira intently watches a late afternoon football match on a muddy, barely marked field in East Timor’s capital. One day, he hopes to don the red and yellow shirt of his fledgling nation. ”I like to watch them pass the ball around. The way they pass it, it’s cool,” says de Oliveira, who started playing when he was six and names England’s David Beckham as his idol.
More than 1 000 people have died from a cholera outbreak in Angola over the past 11 weeks, with more than 25 000 others ill from the disease, according to the regional office of the World Health Organisation. The outbreak was detected in the Luanda district of Boa Vista on February 13 and the capital has been the hardest hit by the epidemic with 13 379 cases registered, including 197 deaths.
The wreckage of a Cessna 172 that went missing after leaving South Africa was found in the Abjaterskop area outside the Madikwe Game Reserve in Botswana on Friday. The only occupant of the plane was found dead. This accident is the latest in a spate of tragedies involving South African aircraft.
The Wellington Hurricanes fanned their weak hopes of a home semifinal in the Super 14 when they beat the Queensland Reds 26-22 on Friday in the opening match of the 13th round. The Reds scored three tries to two and were the better team, but lost for the ninth time this season.
The African continent has the world’s highest rate of child labour, with two in five children in sub-Saharan Africa engaged in some form of work, the United Nations Labour Organisation (ILO) said on Thursday. Almost 50-million children in sub-Saharan Africa between the ages of five and 14 work, according to <i>The End of Child Labour: Within Reach</i>, an ILO report released on Thursday.
Constitution Day, May 8, must be a day of celebration — a red-letter day — for South Africa because what it represents took 53 years to achieve, says South African President Thabo Mbeki. This was the entrenchment of the concept of self-determination.
As expected, South Africa’s third largest gold producer Harmony Gold reported its eleventh consecutive quarterly headline loss due to the Christmas break, a reduction in grades and an increase in costs. For the March quarter, Harmony reported a headline loss of 50 cents per share from a loss of 75 cents in the December quarter.
The drive for peace in the devastated Sudanese region of Darfur took a tentative step nearer success on Friday with one rebel faction agreeing to sign a peace deal, although another still refused. The African Union’s year-old drive to bring peace to Darfur with a comprehensive package had begun the day in crisis with continued refusal by the rebels to sign a deal to end the three-year-old civil war.
Zimbabwe players and officials are demanding that the chief executive of the International Cricket Council resigns because he failed to address the sporting crisis in the country. The chairperson of all seven provinces, players’ representatives and former Zimbabwe Cricket directors accuse Malcolm Speed of failing in his duty by refusing to intervene.