Lisa has her monthly period, which means she can’t work. Her cellphone screen flashes incessantly with the names of her regulars, but she only answers her boyfriend’s calls. Her boyfriend, Pieter, knows her line of work, but condones it because he is unemployed. The M&G takes a first-hand look at SA’s burgeoning poor white problem and finds a world turned topsy turvy for a formerly favoured nation
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Morocco complained on Thursday that international aid to help it fight off a plague of locusts threatening its crops has fallen far short of what is needed. Since June 30 on average 106 000 hectares a day have been infested and swarms are heading south, in particular to Mauritania, Mali and Senegal.
Belgian investigators on Thursday continued to question confessed French serial killer Michel Fourniret, who has already admitted to nine murders, over a number of other alleged crimes. French police are reportedly reinvestigating about 30 unsolved murders and Belgian authorities have reopened a dozen unsolved cases.
A group of retail pharmacies may not boycott medical schemes who refuse to accept its trading conditions, the Competition Commission said on Thursday.
The commission ruled that United South African Pharmacies had contravened the Competition Act in boycotting the Anglo American Corporation Medical Scheme and the Engen Medical Fund.
Leading media and entertainment group Johnnic Communications will contribute R4,6-million towards a new teaching facility for the Rhodes University school of journalism in Grahamstown, group CEO Connie Molusi has announced. The grant comes as part of a long-standing partnership between the company and Rhodes University.
A grenade exploded overnight in a shop owned by a group linked to Madagascar’s President Marc Ravalomanana in the central town of Fianarantsoa, the Indian Ocean island state’s public safety minister said on Thursday. The blast took place hours after a grenade exploded in the courtyard of the home of former president Albert Zafy.
Seven soccer officials appeared in courts in Polokwane and Bloemfontein on Thursday after being arrested during the police crackdown on football match-fixing. Twenty-nine soccer officials have been arrested so far in the investigation into match-fixing and corruption requested by the South African Football Association.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=118388">Soccer refs ‘didn’t sleep at home'</a>
Patients in the emerging health-care market — notably in urban townships and rural areas — will in future have less accessibility to the medicines that are becoming more affordable to them in the wake of new government legislation. This is the contention of Johannesburg-based empowerment group Amalgamated Healthcare.
While South Africans have so far been spared an outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) that has spread across developing nations in Asia in particular, there is no room for complacency. Researchers in Singapore have suggested that Sars patients may run a higher-than-average risk of developing tuberculosis.