The principal architect for the new World Trade Centre has sued the site’s developer for 750 over unpaid fees, signalling an apparently irreparable dispute over creative control of the project. Little more than a week after the first stone was laid, the two main characters in the project are mired in recrimination.
More black economic empowerment deals are on the cards in South Africa’s financial sector. Speculation in the market is that Cyril Ramaphosa’s Millennium Consolidated Investments is to form part of the BEE consortium that will take a 10% stake in Standard Bank.
Six hours after Jamal Mirsaidov met with the British ambassador, the limp and mutilated corpse of his grandson was dumped on his doorstep. The ambassador, Craig Murray, has paid a more direct price for his decision to step out of the bubble of immunity in which most diplomats live and challenge human-rights abuses in Uzbekistan.
Chinese meteorologists are accusing each other of what could prove to be one of the defining crimes of the 21st century: rain theft. The use of cloud-seeding guns, rockets and planes to induce rainfall has created tensions between dry regions, which are competing to squeeze more drops out of the sky than their equally arid neighbours.
French President Jacques Chirac bowed to pressure from across the political spectrum by announcing on Wednesday that France will hold a referendum on whether to adopt the European Constitution, signalling the start of a fraught campaign to ensure the government secures a yes vote.
Dual-listed telecommunications giant Telkom said in a statement on Wednesday that it has provided its recognised unions — the Alliance of Telkom Unions and the Communication Workers Union — with notice of its intention to start consultations next week on the reduction of a possible 1 381 jobs during this financial year.
A devastating report on the state of South Africa’s Road Accident Fund (RAF), which shows that there is no indication that the deteriorating trend of the accumulated deficit will subside, has been tabled in Parliament. The RAF’s accumulated deficit on March 31 2003 was R23,026-billion, compared with R16,6-billion on March 31 2002.
As the South African government is finally coming to understand, President Robert Mugabe and his ministers make pledges and assurances they have no intention of honouring. Mugabe’s stance on the independent media must be seen in the same light. And now Mugabe’s state has turned its guns on the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>.
In recent years, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has become a byword for violence and human rights abuse. Now, inhabitants of Butembo in the North Kivu province are seeking renown for something else: Entrepreneurial initiative. Tired of waiting for government to meet their energy needs, businesspeople from Butembo have joined forces to build a hydroelectric dam.
Botswana, with the highest per-capita rate of HIV infection in world, is struggling to cope with the demand for treatment, despite pouring much of its diamond wealth into the battle against the disease. “We are faced with an ever-worsening, perpetual, insatiable demand,” said Ernest Darkoh, operations manager for Botswana’s anti-retroviral drugs programme.