From Africa to Russia, from Peru to China, mining companies face a problem: the workers who haul up the earth’s riches are coming down with HIV/Aids, and it is hampering operations at a time of booming demand for minerals. Worldwide the disease has killed about 30-million people, double the amount of casualties in World War I.
Libya’s Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld death sentences on five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor for deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV, a judge said. ”The court rejects the appeals of the defendants and confirms the death penalty,” judge Fathi Dhan told a five-minute hearing.
The Democratic Alliance has asked Justice Minister Brigitte Mabandla what she is doing to resolve the issue of Judge John Hlophe. The DA said it had noted with great concern Hlophe’s continued ”obvious contempt” for judicial process, spokesperson Tertius Delport said in a statement.
Envelopes with cash have been left in public restrooms across Japan, officials said on Wednesday, as the bizarre form of anonymous charity turned into a nationwide phenomenon. A day after two small cities on the main island of Honshu reported finding cash in men’s rooms in public buildings, officials across Japan disclosed that they too had discovered such mysterious packages.
The question of who smoked what and with whom is making Australian politicians dizzy after a rock singer said he had shared marijuana joints with an MP and visiting U2 star Bono. Silverchair singer Daniel Johns said in a radio interview this week that he had been invited with his actress wife, Natalie Imbruglia, and MP Peter Garrett to a house rented by Bono in Sydney last November.
Mining giant BHP Billiton said on Wednesday that Cape Town-born Marius Kloppers is to succeed Chip Goodyear as its CEO from October this year. A chemical engineer by training, Kloppers is currently group president of non-ferrous materials including copper, lead, zinc and nickel, as well as diamonds.
Libya’s Supreme Court will rule on Wednesday on an appeal by six foreign medics sentenced to death for infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the HIV virus following a report of a deal for their release. The highly politicised case of the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor has blocked Libya’s efforts to deepen links to the West.
At least 20 people were injured when a truck collided with a train in Pretoria West on Wednesday, paramedics said. ER24 spokesperson Riana Beech said the 20-tonne truck had been travelling along Roger Dyson Road in Pretoria West when its brakes are believed to have failed, causing the driver to lose control.
Zimbabwean police have set up roadblocks to stop the movement of basic commodities between cities and rural areas. Police spokesperson Oliver Mandipaka said that police had information that shop owners were moving loads of basic commodities to rural areas for ”safe keeping”.
It has been one of the central claims of those who challenge the idea that human activities are to blame for global warming. The planet’s climate has long fluctuated, say the climate sceptics, and current warming is just part of that natural cycle — the result of variation in the sun’s output and not carbon dioxide emissions.