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/ 25 January 2007
The invitations described it as an opportunity for the "notable people" of Gaza to meet their prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who was elected as Palestinian prime minister a year ago. Dressed in a suit and tie and with a red and white keffiyeh draped over his head and shoulders, Haniyeh spoke for an hour to an audience of Palestinian newspaper editors and local figures in Gaza City this week.
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/ 25 January 2007
Asia’s passion for singing and karaoke may be legendary, but now Asians are so enamoured of Western opera that Europe’s music academies are bursting at the seams with young Korean and Chinese opera students with stars in their eyes. ”The Koreans are mad about opera,” Christophe Capacci, the new artistic director for classical music and jazz at Midem.
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/ 25 January 2007
An advertisement in the back pages of last week’s Mail & Guardian, placed by the government of the North West, announced a conference on ”stonewalling”. Turns out they were talking about building dry stone walls, and not about local government’s communÂÂications strategy. You live and learn.
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/ 25 January 2007
Strong global economic growth is failing to reduce unemployment worldwide and has done little to cut the number of ”working poor” who earn less than a day, the International Labour Organisation said on Thursday. Even though more people were employed than ever before, the number of new jobs created failed to match the rise in global population.
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/ 25 January 2007
Today we publish details of the sad erosion of the ANC Youth League, the original political home of towering nationalist leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Robert Sobukwe and Anton Lembede. From its proud beginnings in the 1940s as a home of radicalism and principle, it has degenerated into a platform for populist grandstanding, infighting and the pursuit of money and power.
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/ 25 January 2007
Businessman Tokyo Sexwale has declined to respond to information that he met with ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma to ask him for his assistance in elbowing out Cyril Ramaphosa from the party’s presidential race. Sources in Jacob Zuma’s camp say Sexwale not only met Zuma at least three times last year to discuss his bid for the party leadership — he also asked for Zuma’s help in fighting off tycoon Ramaphosa.
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/ 24 January 2007
The South African Youth Commission has accepted as accurate a damning report by a former employee describing the organisation as highly ineffective and lacking policy, measurable objectives and data on youth practices. ”These are some of the weaknesses that we are currently addressing,” commission chairperson Nomi Nkondlo on Wednesday told a Parliamentary committee.
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/ 24 January 2007
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang should not be given the ”sweeping” powers set out in proposed changes to the tobacco-control law, British American Tobacco (BAT) argued on Wednesday. David Crow, managing director of BAT South Africa, was speaking on the second day of public hearings on the draft legislation by Parliament’s health portfolio committee.
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/ 24 January 2007
The United States this week conducted a second air strike in Somalia, US officials said on Wednesday, as the top US envoy in East Africa met an ousted Islamist leader to press for reconciliation with the government. The new air strike came roughly two weeks after an AC-130 plane killed what Washington said were eight al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters.