Comedian Marc Lottering plans to become a walking, talking condom dispenser, to ”encourage all Capetonians to protect themselves and to survive”, he said in a statement announcing the launch of an innovative nationwide HIV/Aids pledge campaign this weekend. Pledges will be not for money, but rather for action.
Problems between the Scorpions and the police are among the inevitable challenges of managing a society’s law enforcement, the Institute of Security Studies told the Khampepe Commission on Friday. The commission entered its fifth day of public hearings into the future of the Scorpions, which operates as an elite crime-busting unit.
The massive HIV/Aids campaigns that South African society is constantly bombarded with has no effect on reducing the pandemic’s prevalence rate. This is according to Warren Parker, a researcher and director of the Johannesburg-based Centre for Aids, who was addressing the Gauteng Aids conference in Midrand on Friday morning.
Merck opened its defence on Thursday in the second product liability trial over its arthritis medicine, countering claims that it did not study whether Vioxx might cause more heart ailments than other pain relievers. Merck researcher Dr Briggs Morrison told jurors the company conducted several studies of Vioxx before putting it on the market in May 1999, each concluding that Vioxx posed no threats to heart health.
Young, clean-cut North Korean guards keep alert as South Koreans scramble up Mount Kumgang, a craggy tourist enclave inside the Stalinist state. They seem happy to welcome their richer brothers and sisters from capitalist South Korea to North Korea’s only tourist resort, known as Diamond Mountain in English.
The United States Congress held an unprecedented hearing on Thursday on India’s Dalits, once known as the ”untouchables,” highlighting what it calls a key human rights issue in the world’s largest democracy. About 200-million of India’s estimated population of a billion people are Dalits, occupying the bottom rung in Hinduism’s 2 500-year-old caste system.
The tremors from Anton Oliver’s controversial biography continued on Friday with ex-coach Laurie Mains accusing the former All Black captain of dumping on his teammates. Oliver described the tensions in the Super 12 Otago Highlander team coached by Mains, saying there would have been a player revolt if the ”manipulative” and ”petty” Mains had not left at the end of the 2003 season.
Minister of Education Naledi Pandor expressed horror on Thursday at the disruption of the matric-exam process in the Eastern Cape by teachers involved in a labour dispute. ”We must not allow the Eastern Cape to get the lowest pass rates again,” she reacted to reports that teachers have been prevented from submitting pupils’ year marks.
After opening in the black, the JSE surrendered its gains on Friday morning, extending its losing streak into a third day. The bourse’s weakness was in line with the global trend. By 12.05pm, the all-share and all-share industrial indices shed 0,85% and 1,08% respectively.
Mpumalanga Premier Thabang Makwetla’s office on Friday morning vehemently denied reports that he had to be rescued from a stone-throwing crowd in Delmas the previous afternoon. Makwetla was meeting residents on the typhoid outbreak and was seeking to reassure them that the water in the area was safe to drink.