By day, residents of The Villages enjoy all the respectable pursuits of a healthy old age — a hand of cards, a tea dance and perhaps a round of golf before happy hour. But doctors are reporting a sharp rise in sexually transmitted diseases such as herpes and human papillomavirus among pensioners at the retirement community and say the growing popularity of Viagra is to blame.
It is going to come as a shock to tens of millions of lungs, but the Chinese government is planning a tobacco-free Olympics when the world’s heaviest smoking nation hosts the event in 2008. ”Let a smokeless games provide healthy competition, a healthy environment and a healthy lifestyle,” the Health Ministry said in a news release.
Congress has stalled Pentagon plans to put conventional warheads on inter-continental missiles for use in Washington’s ”war on terror”, out of concern that they could trigger a nuclear war. The defence department is seeking -million for the conversion of submarine-based missiles as part of its Global Strike project.
The African National Congress Youth League must retract its calls for the party’s next president to be Jacob Zuma, ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe said on Monday. Motlanthe said the youth league ought to be guided by the policies of the party, which gave it the same status as each of the nine provinces in terms of nominations.
South African cellular operator Vodacom on Tuesday reported a group-wide customer increase of 51,9% to 23,5-million for the year ended March. Revenue was up 24,6% to R34-billion, while profit from operations rose by 36,9% to R8,9-billion. Vodacom reported net profit after taxation up 32% to R5,1-billion.
The number of South African companies doing business in Africa has more than doubled since 1994, Minster of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma told MPs on Monday. She noted that the figures were drawn from <i>Who Owns Whom</i> and the South African Institute of International Affairs.
Indonesia’s president warned on Monday night it would take months to deal with the basic needs of tens of thousands of earthquake survivors, as rescue teams all but gave up hope of pulling more people alive from the rubble. Relief has started trickling through to towns demolished by Saturday’s 6,3-magnitude quake that killed at least 4 300 people on Java island.
Winning the South African Guild of Motoring Journalists Car of the Year award is no mean feat, especially when you take into consideration the scores of new models that are launched every year in South Africa. Members of the guild normally whittle down the options (by vote) and the cars are then tested extensively by members.
The facelifted Honda Accord looks like a neater, sexier version of an over-the-top racing Nascar: it is broad, squat with a no-nonsense nose, dark 17-inch alloy wheels that fill the flared wheel arches and it sits quite close to the ground. By far the most impressive aspect of the upgraded Accord is that Honda is offering these cars with more features at a reduced price.
A few years ago the Actuarial Society of South Africa held a seminar on the responsibilities of a pension trustee. At the end of the seminar, when asked who would still be comfortable to take on the role of a pension trustee, not a single hand went up, demonstrating the weighty responsibility that trustees carry, says Magda Wierzycka, CEO of African Harvest Fund Managers.