A former director of the United Nations Commission on HIV/Aids and Governance in Africa has painted a gloomy picture of efforts to bring the pandemic under control across the continent. ”There is absolutely nothing optimistic about HIV in Africa, 25 years after the virus was discovered,” said Nana Poku.
Researchers conducted a test flight in the Australian Outback on Saturday of a supersonic jet intended to travel at speeds of up to 8 000kph. The ,42-million project was launched by researchers at the University of Queensland in the remote community of Woomera, about 500km north of the South Australian state capital, Adelaide.
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The Public Protector, the Gender Commission and the South African Human Rights Commission have expressed concern over the conduct of Jacob Zuma supporters and media coverage of his rape trial. The three bodies — all set up under chapter nine of the Constitution and referring to themselves as the C9s — said they met on Friday to discuss events around the trial.
The people behind the hoax e-mails that sought to implicate influential figures in the African National Congress in a plot against Jacob Zuma would be charged ”very soon”, national police commissioner Jackie Selebi said on Saturday. Selebi’s statement comes after a decision by President Thabo Mbeki earlier this week, to fire the head of the National Intelligence Agency, Billy Masetlha.
Unions have rejected a revised Telkom offer on profit-sharing and service awards, the company said on Friday. The fresh negotiations had not been well received by the Communication Workers’ Union and Solidarity, said Telkom personnel chief Charlotte Mokoena.
”There’s over 40 walls in the average American home,” a business manager for the artist Thomas Kinkade once said, ”and Thom says our job is to figure out how to populate every single wall in every single home and every single business throughout the world with his paintings.” Kinkade’s luridly idyllic landscapes, full of quaint cottages and glowing firelight, already hang in an estimated one in 20 US homes.
Russia funnelled intelligence on United States troop movements in Iraq to Saddam Hussein during the early days of the war, according to documents contained in a Pentagon report released on Friday night. Documents apparently from Saddam’s regime, seized by the Americans, described how Russia collected crucial plans from ”inside the American central command”.
Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian president of Belarus, is to be banned from travelling to the European Union and United States after riot police in Minsk arrested hundreds of opposition activists protesting against the results of last weekend’s elections.
The doping hearings for two Indian weightlifters were adjourned until Sunday, leaving the arbitration court little time to deliver its finding before the Commonwealth Games’ closing ceremonies. Directors have assembled a cast of Australian artists and performers to bring the curtain down on Melbourne 2006 and hand over to New Delhi organisers for the 2010 event.
A strong earthquake killed one person and injured at least 160 in central Japan on Sunday, demolishing houses, buckling roads, triggering landslides and cutting off water supplies. More than 1 300 people evacuated to shelters after 44 houses collapsed and about 200 others, mostly wooden with heavy tile roofs, were seriously damaged by the 6,9 magnitude earthquake.