Australian Prime Minister John Howard is on course to win a fourth victory in the general election this Saturday. Most opinion polls indicate that the results will be close, but Howard is firming up as the favourite. His opponent, Australian Labour Party (ALP) leader Mark Latham, needs to win 12 seats in the lower house of Parliament to gain government.
Opposition and donors have heaped praise on Malawi’s President Bingu Mutharika for the way in which he runs the government, but his leadership has irked a group in his ruling United Democratic Front who have held secret meetings to plan a demonstration at his Lilongwe state house. Mutharika, who succeeded Bakili Muluzi after the controversial May elections, has vowed to prosecute corrupt officials.
In a touching display of muscular singing and rhythmic dancing on stick-like legs with the aid of crutches, the handicapped adults of Theis in Senegal are drumming up their own style of social mobilisation campaign, calling on people not to let their children end up in wheelchairs and be crippled by polio like them. Joining the chorus from mosques and minarets, the word has gone out across 23 sub-Saharan African countries.
The construction industry has set itself the task of drafting a black economic empowerment charter — amid sharp differences over ownership targets and skills development. Mike Wylie, co-chairperson of the charter work group, told the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> last week that the sector should not be trapped by a "fixation on ownership".
Heterosexual men need to take more responsibility for trying to stop the spread of HIV/Aids in Southern Africa, according to regional health experts. At a workshop held in Swaziland’s capital, Mbabane, on Thursday, health workers, government officials and Aids activists called on men across the region to assume a greater role in tackling the disease. At 38,6%, Swaziland has the one of world’s highest rates of HIV infection.
If the truth be told, President Thabo Mbeki did not need to go on the imbizo that ended in Mpumalanga’s Ga-Manoke village last week, to understand the concerns of his people. This is not to say that the president wasted his time. Nor does it mean that it is a futile exercise for people to meet their elected public officials. Each village and town has its own nuances and idiosyncracies, and the country’s number-one citizen can surely learn a thing or two by paying them a visit.
Billionaire investor George Soros is giving greater control of his business to his sons, Robert and Jonathan, and at the same time scaling back his empire by spinning off several divisions. For years Soros (74) has devoted an increasing amount of time to philanthropy and is engaged in a concerted effort to unseat United States President George W Bush.
At first glance the violence in Jabaliya in Palestine and in the Iraqi town of Samarra appear to be unconnected. The Israeli army’s incursion into northern Gaza looks like just another deadeningly familiar episode in the unending conflict between Palestinians and Jews. The United States-led weekend assault on insurgents in mainly Sunni Samarra seems to be broadly typical of the continuing turmoil in Iraq.
The Iraq Survey Group, after 17 months of hunting through Iraq and interviewing hundreds of members of Saddam Hussein’s regime, last week delivered a verdict unhelpful to George W Bush or Tony Blair: that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction when they went to war and that there was no imminent threat. The two leaders will have to justify the war in Iraq in terms of Hussein’s intentions rather than the reality.
A billionaire is hardly ever mistaken for an innocent abroad but you have to wonder if Malcolm Glazer understands just what he is getting into. The septuagenarian seems set to attempt a takeover of Manchester United. He must be one of the few men left who believe there are riches to be had in British football. It might look as if a fortune awaits, but others who mounted a raid discovered that the vault was booby-trapped.