Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the head of Pakistan’s ruling party and a loyal ally of the nation’s military ruler, was elected caretaker prime minister in a rubber-stamp vote in Parliament on Tuesday. Hussain is expected to stay in office only for a matter of weeks, until respected Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz assumes the premiership.
Sudanese security services have banned a demonstration planned to coincide with visits by United States Secretary of State Colin Powell and United Nationa Secretary General Kofi Annan, a government newspaper reported on Tuesday. The demonstration was to be staged primarily to protest alleged ”US and UN double standards”.
A hardy group of 181 passengers boarded a jet at Singapore airport on Monday for the world’s longest commercial flight — an inaugural non-stop service to New York designed to appeal to time-pressed Asian and American business executives. Singapore Airlines said it would knock four hours off a one-stop service and would cut down on delays.
Soon it will be possible to write an Internet address in Korean, Hebrew, Arabic and many other languages that do not use the Western alphabet. At the moment, you can write a Web page using any script you choose, but the address of that page requires at least some knowledge of the alphabet used in Western Europe, the United States and other predominantly English-speaking countries.
Nothing gets dedicated techies hotter under the collar than a discussion about Microsoft’s software monopoly. Another subject that will get them talking is open-source software. Open-source is the antithesis of what Microsoft and other companies have been pursuing over the years. Mark Shuttleworth speaks to the <i>M&G</i> about the coming software revolution.
Technology group Altron says it has made strong advances in terms of its black economic empowerment (BEE) and acquisition programmes and that much emphasis has been placed on the group meeting the anticipated requirements of the BEE charter for the information, communications and technology (ICT) sector.
Zambia has released 14 coup plotters from prison after President Levy Mwanawasa commuted their death sentences to prison terms earlier this year. The 14 junior soldiers, who were convicted for their role in a foiled 1997 military coup against then president Frederick Chiluba, were released after serving one-third of their 10-year prison sentences.
A decade after the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development, maternal mortality continues to plague Africa. Delegates to a meeting held in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, recently heard that of the 585 000 deaths caused every year by obstetric complications, many occur in sub-Saharan Africa.
Israeli troops moved into northern Gaza on Tuesday in a bid to halt rocket attacks by Palestinian militants but failed to stop a new volley landing in southern Israel, a day after the missiles claimed their first fatalities. Meanwhile, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead by Israeli troops in the southern Gaza Strip.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=117902">Gaza braces for revenge</a>
The executive in charge of circulation for the <i>Chicago Sun-Times</i> has resigned, two weeks after the paper’s parent company announced it had inflated its circulation figures for several years. Another Chicago-based newspaper company also announced two weeks ago that it overstated circulation numbers.