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.
President Thabo Mbeki on Tuesday called on a conference in Cape Town on the Palestinian issue to produce results that could be discussed at the African Union summit in Ethiopia next week. Mbeki said the Palestinian problem should be included among the challenges facing Africa.
Scores protest at Palestinian meeting
Media and entertainment holding group Johnnic Holdings on Tuesday reported a 124% leap in pro forma headline earnings from R55-million to R123-million for the year ended March. It attributed the increase to improved earnings from the entertainment and media businesses, among others.
A rocket attack on an Israeli town killed a three-year-old boy and a man on Monday as Palestinian militants stepped up their assaults on Israeli targets before the removal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip. The attack on Sderot is the first in which one of the hundreds of rudimentary rockets fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip in the past three years has proved fatal.
A Singaporean student appears to have thumbed her way into the Guinness Book of Records after smashing the previous fastest time for text-messaging a 160-character text on a cellphone phone. The Singaporean media reported on Monday that Kimberly Yeo (23) clocked 43,24 seconds in the final of a competition organised by the city-state’s main telephone company, SingTel.
The board of South African steel giant Iscor has approved a proposal that the group’s name be changed to Ispat Iscor Limited. This in is line with the global practice of LNM Group — the world’s second-largest steel maker, which last week gained control of the South African group — to add the word Ispat to the names of its subsidiaries.
Basket-selling by futures players on Tuesday acted in tandem with lower precious metal prices to send the JSE Securities Exchange (JSE) deep into the red by noon. Decliners outnumbered advancers on the all-share index by about two to one. By 11.56am, the all-share index weakened 1,1%.
The South Africa/China binational commission was an example of the deepening relations between the two countries, Deputy President Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday. Zuma and his counterpart, Zeng Qinghong, will sign various bilateral agreements including agreements on education, on citrus exports from South Africa to China and between Sasol and a consortium of Chinese companies.