Vitamin salesman Matthias Rath on Wednesday renewed his offensive against Aids lobby group the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), saying it should be banned. The attack comes less than a week after a full bench of the Cape High Court granted the TAC an interim interdict against Rath and the foundation.
In Hollywood race is the new sex. Days after Crash beat Brokeback Mountain at the Oscars, reality television is taking a rest from engineering on-screen couplings to experiment with racial role-swapping. Black. White. uses advanced make-up techniques to turn a black family white and a white family black, and then send them out into Los Angeles equipped with hidden cameras.
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The big wait continued on Wednesday as parties carried on the behind-the-scenes negotiations that will determine who will govern Cape Town, where no party won a clear majority in last week’s local government polls. ”Talks are continuing, progress is being made. But it all takes a long time,” a Democratic Alliance spokesperson said.
The United States called for extraordinary action to get to the bottom of Iran’s nuclear programme on Wednesday as Tehran and Washington moved into confrontational mode in the long-running dispute. The US ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Greg Schulte, called for ”special inspections” by the United Nations nuclear teams in Iran.
The four-year-old granddaughter of Transvaal Judge President Bernard Ngoepe was kidnapped in a robbery in Lenasia on Wednesday, Vaal police said. Preliminary investigations ruled out the possibility of a link between the kidnapping and the Jacob Zuma rape trial, from which Ngoepe had recused himself.
The full extent of child abuse scandals threatening the Roman Catholic church in Ireland has emerged in a study by the archdiocese of Dublin which reveals that more than 100 of its priests have faced paedophile accusations since 1940. More than 350 children are said to have been sexually or physically abused in that period.
Standard Bank on Thursday reported a 23% increase in headline earnings per share for the year to the end of December 2005. Headline earnings increased from 570,3 cents to 702,3 cents per share, which was much better than the I-Net Bridge consensus forecast of headline earnings per share of 666,5 cents.
Listed financial services group Sanlam has reported a 99% increase in headline earnings per share for the year to the end of December 2005 to 229,8 cents from 115,3 cents a year earlier. The company declared a total dividend for the year of 65 cents per share, a 30% increase on the 50 cents per share distributed in 2004.
Miracles, like much else in the Catholic church, aren’t what they used to be. The French shrine of Lourdes has often been likened to a religious theme park, offering package tours and souvenirs for the millions of pilgrims who arrive each year, many of them sick and desperate to experience or at least witness a miracle.
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