The death toll from floods unleashed by Tropical Storm Jeanne rose sharply to nearly 2 000 people, with many still missing, as officials said they found hundreds more bodies in Haiti’s devastated northwestern region. The new toll stands at 1 970 dead and 884 missing, said Dieufort Deslorges, a spokesperson for Haiti’s civil protection agency.
Ariel Sharon said on Sunday that an assault on the Gaza strip that has claimed more than 60 lives and injured 250 people — the bloodiest of the intifada — will be expanded until it puts an end to Hamas rocket strikes against Israel. At least eight people were killed on Sunday, most of them insurgents.
World silence ‘encourages’ Sharon
From the outside, the local community association on the west side of Chicago doesn’t look much. The only sign on the shabby one-storey building is a piece of paper stuffed inside a clear plastic jacket on the front door. The building was supposed to be a temporary home but somehow years have gone by and the organisation is still there.
Some wore buckets on their heads, others swung sticks, and those who could sheltered indoors, praying for an end to the locust invasion which on Sunday swept through Mauritania’s capital, Nouakchott. The swarm devastated crops and the city’s few parks, and left residents feeling besieged and impotent in the face of west Africa’s worst locust infestation for over a decade.
Four online publishers, Creamer Media, 5FM Music, JHBLive and Business in Africa, have joined the ranks of the Online Publishing Association (OPA), it was announced on Monday. The new members now bring the total number of online publishers that are part of the OPA to 21.
Finally, Anglo American struck back last week — briefing journalists and editors on the risk imbroglio between President Thabo Mbeki and its CEO, Tony Trahar.
It was a mild strike. The company downplayed its global reach and ambition, painting itself as more proudly South African than Venter trailers and boerewors. It’s going to take more than a charm offensive to heal the rift between the government and big business.
A few months ago new Absa CEO, Steve Booysen, predicted that the bank would look at buying an African bank every year for the foreseeable future as part of its future strategy. The proposed Barclays deal to take a 50,1% stake in Absa may leapfrog this bold prediction, as a tie-up with Barclays would give Absa a huge leg-up on the continent and representation in a number of African countries.
Simmering tension in Kenya’s coalition government has exploded into open hostility with war-talk and vicious, personal attacks. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) — a "partner" in the ruling National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) — last week confirmed its intention to abandon the coalition "in time" to fight its erstwhile allies in the 2007 election.
<i>Fahrenheit 451</i> was a Ray Bradbury science fiction classic novel that was turned into a futuristic (well, futuristic in those days) movie in 1966 by the great French New Wave director Francois Truffaut. And of course, by his choice of title for his new documentary, Michale Moore inevitably invites comparison with the earlier work and his <i>Fahrenheit 9/11</i>.
Despite the recent teachers’ strike, things have gone well for Naledi Pandor, the Minister of Education. But surely her predecessors will have told Pandor that dragons, far more fierce than some vice-chancellors, lurk in the gloomy waters around South Africa’s universities. After 10 years of "torrid government interference" in universities, Peter Vale offers six of the best to the new Minister of Education.