The head of the United Nations’s probe into illegal kickbacks paid to Iraq under the oil-for-food programme found the Australian government initially uncooperative and reticent to provide information. The Australian panel examining the discredited programme was told that Foreign Minister Alexander Downer had at first prevented the UN from interviewing government officials over the scandal.
Treating mothers for depression can mean long-term happiness for their children, according to a study published on Tuesday. Depression is known to be passed on genetically, but it can also be affected by the environment in which a child is raised, according to authors of an article published by the Journal of the American Medical Association.
South Africa recorded its largest recorded capital inflow in 2005, the South African Reserve Bank said in its quarterly bulletin released on Thursday. ”Sound macroeconomic policies in South Africa and continued positive investor sentiment towards emerging markets in general gave rise to sizeable capital inflows in the country in 2005,” the bank said.
The JSE was firmer in noon trade on Thursday helped by positive US markets overnight. Strength in heavyweight resources stocks in London played a major role in the bourse’s strength. By 12.06pm, the all share index added 0,52%. Resources rallied 0,89% and the platinum mining index inched up 0,09%, but the gold mining index lost 0,77%.
A Gabonese opposition leader has taken refuge in the South African embassy in the West African country, South Africa’s ambassador to Gabon said on Wednesday. ”He thought his safety was at risk, he feared he was to be arrested for certain things the government alleges against his party,” Joe Khasu said from Libreville.
Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of the hawkish Likud Party, hopes to complete his political rehabilitation by returning to the prime minister’s office and resuming a post the Israeli public evicted him from in the May 1999 elections. As Likud leader, Netanyahu has been campaigning that he represents the ”true” Likud values.
How to spend the night in a protest rally and not freeze, or bring food to protestors and not be molested by the police? Ask those Belarussian websites not yet shut down by the authorities.
Municipal officials have for the second time levied a dog tax on the Bruintjes family in the Dutch town of Oldenzaal for their barking doorbell, the family said on Thursday. The Bruintjes have chosen a ring for their computer-controlled doorbell that mimicks their dead German shepherd.
Eight miners were trapped underground on Thursday after a fire in the Buffelsfontein gold mine at Stilfontein, the company said. Simmer & Jack Mines chief executive Gordon Miller said everything humanly possible was being done to rescue the miners. Indications were that the fire was caused by an electrical problem.
Ivana Edwards’s friends and neighbours laughed when she and her husband built their steel-reinforced concrete house 20 years ago to withstand any weather that tropical northern Australia could throw at them. But as category-five Cyclone Larry arrived, she knew they had been right.