George W Bush (approval rating: 29%) is used to being unpopular with the US electorate. But now he is even losing the support of the rightwingers in his party — and they’re showing their displeasure in dollars, not just percentage points. In the run-up to the last two American election campaigns, eager Republicans lined their party’s coffers by paying up to $25 000 to have the president pose for a picture with them at fundraising events.
Globalisation has reduced the bargaining power of unskilled workers and pushed up inequality in many Western countries, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said this week, urging governments to improve their social safety nets. The Paris-based rich nations club said in its annual Employment Outlook that the prospect of offshoring was likely to have increased the vulnerability of jobs.
Zimbabwe’s escalating food crisis comes amid resurgent accusations that food aid is being abused as a political tool. The Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Food Programme have said that more than 2,1-million Zimbabweans in both rural and urban areas will be in dire need of food aid in the third quarter of this year.
Three weeks ago, when the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor opened in The Hague, the accused made headlines for failing to appear in court. In his former capacity as the president of Liberia, Taylor is accused of having presided over a criminal network of armed combatants, whose crimes in Sierra Leone between 1996 and 2002 amounted to violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.
A few weeks ago a tele-vision reviewer for one of the national dailies filed his opinions on the hit drama, The Sopranos. He was appalled to learn that the show was nothing but an orgy of violence, betrayal and sexual infidelity. Of course it is. What is surprising is that he was surprised.
Cherie Blair repeatedly urged her husband to sack Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown as she became incensed by his behaviour towards the prime minister, a family friend of the Blairs has disclosed. Barry Cox, who has known the couple for 30 years, said that while the relationship between Blair and his chancellor had been strained since the mid-1990s, the prime minister finally began to believe the worst of his successor during his final year in office.
You’ve gone grey, a long-time friend said looking at me in embarrassment. Perhaps he thought I had gone grey overnight. Not so. My silver-grey head of hair was 20 years in the making. ”You should talk to Jenny; she does something to her hair every week,” he told me.
What happens when one and a half million human beings are imprisoned in a tiny, arid territory, cut off from their compatriots and from any contact with the outside world, starved by an economic blockade and unable to feed their families? Some months ago, I described this situation as a sociological experiment set up by Israel, the United States and the European Union, writes Uri Avnery.
Three years into Transnet’s turn-around, Maria Ramos has swapped her customary high heels for a pair of sturdier shoes, as financial and management restructuring gives way to an enormous operational overhaul of the rail, port, and pipelines businesses. The past fortnight has seen announcements about a better deal for pensioners, the R1,4-billion sale of the housing loan book to FNB, and the planned disposal of the Carlton Centre.
A restricted United Nations report says the human-rights situation in the Western Sahara is of serious concern. The report, released this week by the office of the UN’s high commission for human rights, says ”the Saharawi people are not only denied their right to self-determination, but … severely restricted from exercising a series of other rights …