Beijing officials are planning to round up beggars and ship them out of the city as part of clean-up campaign ahead of next year’s Olympics Games, according to state media reports on Thursday. It said Beijing officials planned to expand holding centres for beggars who would then be shipped back to their home provinces.
South African wine distribution company Distell has entered into a deal with Baarsma Wine Group Holding to carry some of its leading brands in Holland, it said on Thursday. The Netherlands is South Africa’s largest wine export market after the United Kingdom.
Illegal migrant workers are frequently assaulted and subject to extortion by South African officials involved in their arrest and deportation, a leading rights group said in a report on Wednesday. The report said that the abuses by officials were in violation of South Africa’s immigration laws.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has been slammed by Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad after the broadcaster aired a documentary on crime in South Africa. The documentary was filmed in Hillbrow and concluded that Johannesburg was the crime capital of the world.
The late and great management guru Peter Drucker said he wasn’t worried about Microsoft because no non-governmental monopoly had ever lasted more than 15 years. Well, Microsoft is proving him wrong. More than 16 years after the debut of its Office suite it still has nearly 95% of the world market for PC operating systems.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe denounced the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday evening, calling dependence on the crisis lender and other donors tantamount to economic slavery, reducing African countries to beggars. ”We don’t have to go to IMF for that, even to any European donor, for what we can do between and amongst ourselves,” Mugabe told a business meeting.
British investors presented plans this week for a vast, all-season resort on the Greek island of Crete, describing it as a model of environment-friendly development and among the biggest investments ever on Greek soil. The project, which includes golf courses, is to be built on land leased from a monastery.
South Africa is prepared to increase seizures of white-owned land to fulfil a promise to restore property to the black majority, a regional land claims commissioner said on Wednesday. The government’s aim is to return land taken during colonialism or apartheid by 2008.
South Africa, which takes the chair of the United Nations Security Council in March, said on Wednesday it would urge Iran to show transparency to the UN nuclear watchdog to avert a showdown over its atomic ambitions. The International Atomic Energy Agency says a lack of Iranian cooperation has left it unable to verify that Tehran’s nuclear activities are wholly peaceful.
Australian judges ruled on Thursday that it was not offensive to call a gay United States television star a ”pillow biter” and a ”pompous little pansy prig”. The judges dismissed a complaint by a gay rights activist against a radio broadcaster who made the remarks about Carson Kressley.