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/ 24 September 2004
President Thabo Mbeki has spent a long week in New York swimming against the tide. It may be difficult to get the United Nations General Assembly to focus on practicalities at the best of times, but the president’s call for a ”new definition” of security premised on expanded prosperity and democracy, struggled for media and diplomatic oxygen on a day dominated by a succession of appalling reports from Iraq.
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/ 24 September 2004
Three staffers at the <i>Mail & Guardian’s</i> sister publication, the <i>Zimbabwe Independent</i>, were arrested at their Harare offices by two police officers from the criminal investigation department. They were charged under Section 80 of the controversial Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
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/ 24 September 2004
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has expressed concern over the country’s banking sector, which it says is a credit risk. Analysts say this means that incidents of bad debt in the financial sector are high.
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/ 24 September 2004
The number of foreign tourists visiting Zimbabwe dropped by 36% in the first half of this year compared to the same time in 2003, the country’s tourism promotion body said on Thursday. The figures by the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) said the number of visitors dropped from 1,3-million in the first six months of last year to 827 245 this year.
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/ 24 September 2004
An art teacher who was jailed for having sex with a 13-year-old pupil and bore his child has said that she and the now 21-year-old plan to marry, according to news reports late on Thursday. Mary Kay LeTourneau, who was 34 when she began a relationship with then-sixth grader Vili Fualaau in 1996, has reunited with him since her release from prison earlier this year.
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/ 24 September 2004
MOVIE OF THE WEEK: Fahrenheit 911 is finally here. And it’s raising eyebrows, as well as temperatures. Shaun de Waal is not disappointed.
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/ 24 September 2004
The Zimbabwean economy has been ranked 138th out of 140 countries, with an inward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Potential Index of 0,064 for the period 2000-2002, the World Investment Report 2004 has revealed. The country compares in the FDI Peformance Index to countries such as Bangladesh and Haiti.
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/ 24 September 2004
The world’s highest ice fields are melting so quickly that they are on course to disappear within 100 years, driving up sea levels, increasing floods and turning verdant mountain slopes into deserts, Chinese scientists warned on Thursday. Researchers said that urgent measures were needed to prepare for the impact of climate change at high altitude.
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/ 24 September 2004
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has axed almost all of its weekend programmes on the radio station SAfm. Although all the presenters were informed of the decision when they were given a month’s notice at the beginning of September, the SABC has not informed the media of the changes to the weekend schedule.
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/ 24 September 2004
United States officials on Thursday night defended the deportation of Yusuf Islam, previously known as Cat Stevens, as it emerged that the former pop star met White House officials earlier this year. Jack Straw, the foreign secretary earlier intervened in the row by telling Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, that the decision to ban Islam ”should not have been taken”.