As standards of living in Zimbabwe continue to deteriorate, the use of child labour on farms has risen sharply, with more than 10Â 000 children estimated to be working in the agricultural sector. Irin recently reported that new commercial farmers, the beneficiaries of the government’s controversial land redistribution programme, were struggling to pay labourers.
Medicine price reform will, on average, save consumers between 13% and 15% this year compared with 2003 prices, says the Department of Health, saying that pricing reform is working. Medicine costs a total R13-billion and R3-billion annually in the private and state sectors respectively.
If you want to make a quick buck, so the saying goes, stay out of media. If your heart’s set, we could add, stay out of business media. The stumbling blocks to profit in the sector are legion, and it’s not as if there’s a lack of competition. Here Kevin Bloom looks at some brands that have come up with innovative responses to the challenges.
Guillaume Soro, leader of the New Forces rebels who occupy the north of war-divided Côte d’Ivoire recently attended his first Cabinet meeting in more than a year. Up to now Soro has refused to travel to the main city, Abidjan, in the government-controlled south since President Laurent Gbagbo’s forces broke a long-held ceasefire agreement in November 2004.
In southern Helmand province, one of the main sources of the world’s opium and heroin, turbaned men fit stones into a cobbled road that is meant to lead them away from growing drugs. Crouching, they peer up at a convoy of armoured vehicles and gun-toting American soldiers that rumbles along the first such road in southern Afghanistan, the most dangerous part of this violent land.
Can it be true that what you wear on your feet can improve your health, weight, posture, muscle tone and circulation, as the various manufacturers assert? Perhaps the most famous among this modern breed are the R 1Â 446 Masai Barefoot Technology trainers, worn by Cherie Blair, Jemima Khan and all over by mummies intent on maintaining their yumminess.
Grace Chidanyika (39) is a mother of three girls, two of whom are in school and very bright. One’s dream is to become a lawyer, while the other hopes to be a banker. As the children talk about their dreams, their mother’s eyes cloud with tears as she wonders how she is going to raise the money for their tuition fees.
Mexico City is developing one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems. In the metropolis of 20-million people, rivers of sewage flow slowly through many of its poor neighbourhoods, it loses 40% to 50% of all its water supplies in leaks and 100 cubic metres of hard-to-dispose waste is generated every second.
Most of this week’s comment on Slobodan Milosevic’s death asserted that he thus cheated justice, escaping an inevitable verdict of guilt at the Hague international court. There is an alternative view, however, that Milosevic’s exit enables justice to escape a hideous embarrassment. The prisoner was likely to be acquitted on a substantial number of the charges against him.
When Irina Khakamada, the femme fatale of Russia’s political opposition, decided to run against Vladimir Putin in the presidential election in March 2004, she asked a Russian public relations firm how she should ”project her brand”. A five-hour brainstorming session yielded only one sure-fire strategy: stage the kidnapping of your husband and child.