The incoming government has announced that service delivery will be the watchword of all departments and has spelt out targets: providing a million jobs, halving the number of people living in poverty, delivering water for all by 2008 and sanitation by 2010. The question is whether they can be practically realised with existing financial commitments in annual budgets. The government will have to double budgets for water and electricity to halve the poverty rate by 2010.
Insurgents, some believed linked with terror suspect Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, unleashed attacks on Thursday on four cities across Iraq leaving more than 66 dead and 268 wounded in an apparently coordinated onslaught. The heaviest death toll of Thursday morning’s violence was in Baquba, northeast of the capital, where at least 20 Iraqis and two US soldiers were killed.
Any campaign to lower the cost of books should look at their whole pricing structure and not just VAT, Education Minister Naledi Pandor said on Thursday. Asked whether she supported calls for VAT on books to be scrapped, Pandor said she liked to start ”where things begin”, which was the cost of books and the markups added by those who were selling them.
A group of about 20 human rights groups led by Amnesty International is asking South African President Thabo Mbeki and other African leaders to put pressure on Zimbabwe over its human rights record. ”We are urging African states to take a more public stand in resolving the crisis in Zimbabwe,” said Amnesty’s spokesperson in South Africa, Samkelo Mokhine.
Another blow to press freedom in Zim
Listed South African entertainment and media group Johnnic Communications on Thursday announced a 108% improvement in attributable earnings to R187-million for the year ended June 30. Basic headline earnings per share were 13% higher at 170 cents from 151 cents before.
Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has told the Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) fast food chain to stay out of Tibet over alleged cruelty to animals, an animal rights group said on Thursday. The Dalai Lama has written a letter to KFC parent company Yum! Brands chief executive David Novak imploring him to abandon plans to expand KFC restaurants into Tibet.
The Bush administration’s thinking about the use of torture in the war on terror was on display on Wednesday after the White House released a file of documents on the treatment of detainees. The memos offer a glimpse of the decision-making process at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the department of justice and the White House.
The eight British sailors and marines detained in Iran are expected to be freed on Thursday, the British Foreign Office said after talks on their release were suspended late on Wednesday. British diplomats from the embassy in Tehran have also visited the men, who are being held in the town of Bandar Mahshahr.
An urgent inquiry was launched in Cyprus on Wednesday night after an undercover police operation exposed a group of up to 100 tourists, including Britons, taking part in what was described a mass orgy aboard a cruise ship off the island. The scenes, shown on local TV and described as ”debauched”, were broadcast after being caught on camera in the police sting.
Young South African women are being given false job offers to lure them into prostitution in Macau, a former Portuguese colony now under Chinese control, says the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). IOM official Jonathan Martens told a conference in Benoni that women were promised employment, luxury accommodation, and payment of between $10 000 and $20 000.