HIV/Aids could reverse most of the development in Lesotho since independence and could drive the country into extreme poverty, the Central Bank of Lesotho has warned. The impact of the disease is being felt at all levels, with prolonged illness inducing financial hardships in many ways, said the bank’s Economic Review for the first quarter of 2004, released last week.
The intensive transformation process undertaken by the South African Post Office over the past three years is starting to reap rewards for the parastatal. Regarded by many at one stage as the Cinderella of the state-owned enterprises, the post office has for the first time in its 200-year history posted a profit.
Sardine frenzy hit the KwaZulu-Natal south coast on Monday as the tiny silver fish headed back home towards the Eastern Cape. Mike Anderson-Reade from the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board said a huge crowd was gathered at Shelley Beach and that at least 150 baskets had been filled with fish.
The manager of a sex club and four of his patrons were arrested during a police raid in New Doornfontein, Johannesburg on Saturday night. ”We were working on information that drugs were being sold and used in the nightclub,” said police spokesperson Inspector Dennis Adriao on Sunday.
Responding to the need to protect clients’ fixed-deposit investment returns against potential volatility, Investec Private Bank’s Treasury team has created HedgePlus, a six-month, prime-linked fixed deposit, designed to hedge against fluctuations in returns using three leading economic factors.
The United States government warned its citizens to keep a low profile on Monday after a car bomb hit a private US security firm in the Afghan capital, killing at least seven people, including two Americans. The Taliban claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack on the office of Dyncorp, which provides bodyguards for Afghan President Hamid Karzai and works for the American government in Iraq.
A young boy looking for his mother walked from one subway station to another on the train tracks, narrowly dodging an oncoming train, a subway official said on Monday. The boy’s mother had mistakenly left him on a subway train and he walked the tracks looking for her after getting off at the next station.
A woman believed to be the wife of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il died of a heart attack earlier this month after a long battle with breast cancer, South Korean news reports said on Monday. Secret funeral services have been held in Pyongyang for Kim’s second wife, Ko Yong-Hui (51) who died on August 13 after returning home from Paris where she received cancer treatment.
Three people, including two children, burnt to death when their home was set alight by a mob in Esikhawini, north of Durban, over the weekend, KwaZulu-Natal police said. The mob poured petrol on two rondavels and a six-roomed house and set them on fire. The group then started shooting occupants of the houses through the windows.
A new trust fund in memory of outstanding Kenyan scientist Thomas Risley Odhiambo is being set up by the African Academy of Sciences to bankroll young scientists across the continent who are tackling local problems. Odhiambo believed that scientists could be instrumental in changing the fate of his continent.