The Unites States vice-president, Dick Cheney, helped to steer through a huge contract for the reconstruction of Iraq’s oil industry on behalf of his old firm, Halliburton, Time magazine reported on Monday. The report, based on an internal Pentagon e-mail, joins a steady stream of allegations of cronyism involving Halliburton.
The discovery of the remains of 15 aborted foetuses by a river in Nairobi has led to the arrest of a gynaecologist and triggered an intense debate over abortion, which is illegal in Kenya, as it is in most African countries. Gynaecologist John Nyamu, who runs two reproductive health clinics in the Kenyan capital, was arrested last week along with two nurses who worked at the health centres.
Oil traders are braced for big price rises when the markets reopen in London and New York on Tuesday morning in the aftermath of the deadly attack by armed militants at Khobar, the Saudi oil producing region. In Japan, where the market was open on Monday, prices of crude rose by more than 2%.
John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, will launch a foray into the Republican heartland of Virginia on Wednesday with an advertising campaign intended as a show of strength. The Kerry camp’s inclusion of Virginia in a 20-state, -million campaign is unusual because no Democrat has won the state for 40 years.
When Aids activists have locked horns with the South African government in recent years, it has often been over the provision of anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs to pregnant women — or adults living with Aids. The challenges of supplying the medicines to HIV-positive children appear to have received less attention. That may change as the national programme to provide ARVs gathers momentum.
Grassy Park and Lavender Hill in Cape Town do not usually inspire visions of tranquillity and beauty. These suburbs, situated on the Cape Flats close to Muizenberg, have traditionally struggled with poverty, crime and other social problems. It is the last place you would expect to find the Western Cape’s only population of hippos. Yet smack in the middle of these Cape Flats suburbs you will find one of Cape Town’s jewels, the Rondevlei Nature Reserve.
In 1995, Madikwe Game Reserve in North West province set out to reverse what then seemed inevitable: the extinction of the African wild dog in South Africa. Some biologists doubted the reserve’s efforts would succeed, and initially their gloomy assessment seemed accurate. But today, Madikwe has set the tone for the relocation of wild dog packs in other reserves.
Wild dogs are in trouble. To save them from extinction, new and innovative conservation methods are needed – urgently. This is exactly what Peter Lindsey is doing, with funding from The Green Trust. Innovative steps are being taken to pull wild dogs back from the brink of extinction.
Until recently, few people outside his native country had ever heard of the Indonesian Energy Minister, Purnomo Yusgiantoro. But now, as the world oil price sets records on an almost daily basis, the man who took over as president of the oil producers’ cartel, Opec, on January 1 this year is rapidly becoming a household name.
"My route to work is a congested N2 city-bound. The far-right lane is marked ‘bus only’. Nice idea. But even the buses ignore it. It’s on the wrong side of traffic for the on- and off-ramps. Along this particular stretch the N2 has three lanes. In practice, the minibuses, ducking and weaving and making space for each other, have created their own left-margin fourth lane," writes Jeremy Cronin.