After taking on Yahoo! and Microsoft in their own backyards, Google, fresh off its high as the most valued media company in the world, might take its next fight to eBay, the online auction giant. The internet has been abuzz, since <i>The Wall Street Journal</i> reported that Google might launch its own online payment system as an alternative to eBay’s PayPal.
Philisiwe Buthelezi, the newly appointed CEO of the National Empowerment Fund (NEF), is just what the tainted and beleaguered funder needs. Someone to imbue it with credibility beyond reproach and to infuse it with a sense of urgency. She takes over an institution that is suffering a credibility crisis.
Okay, time to draw breath. Where are we at, and what is next? First of all: whatever ulterior political motives may exist, President Thabo Mbeki has made a potent statement against corruption. A new standard has been set, not just for public life and public ethics, but for the government and the African National Congress.
In the Mondi Magazine Awards supplement distributed with this issue (we produce and design the booklet on behalf of Mondi) the winning piece by Rian Malan, a riveting profile of JM Coetzee, contains the following: "Our ancestors bestrode Africa like giants, slaughtering game, digging holes for gold, subjugating everyone. "
In Kenya on Saturday morning, Multichoice SA CEO Nolo Letele announced the pending launch of technology that could eventually allow subscribers to skip commercials on the DStv bouquet. The feature is part of the new Personal Video Recorder decoder, and is the local conglomerate’s response to the growing popularity of TiVo in the Unites States and similar devices in Europe.
Will MTN buy into the second national operator (SNO), which is due to start competing with Telkom over the next year? History and some pointers say yes. MTN isn’t saying. JSE Securities Exchange analysts think probably not. A minority stake held by MTN would be a boon for consumers, however.
Discovery Life has thrown its hat into the retirement funding ring with the launch of Optimiser, a product the company says is made-to-order for those fed up with the high costs and lack of transparency in a much-criticised industry. This comes at a time when the government is overhauling the country’s retirement funding regulations.
The conviction of Edgar Ray Killen for the manslaughter of three civil rights workers has a symbolic significance that goes beyond the families of those who died 41 years ago. At stake was not just how Killen would spend his fading years, but whether Mississippi could, and should, address its segregationist past.
The new French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, has declared he will start to tackle France’s unemployment problem within his first 100 days in office. Joblessness, he told his compatriots, is the ”true French disease”. That is self-evident, but De Villepin’s frankness shows that the recognition of the problem is becoming more and more widespread
The seven siblings scamper around the second-storey room in the Liberian capital, veering dangerously close to where the wall should be. One foot wrong and it’s a 20m drop onto a traffic-clogged road. Aside from keeping a beady eye on her children, their mother Josephine also has to feed the entire family on less than a dollar a day.