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/ 27 November 2006
A dual pricing system, which South African cellphone operators have threatened to use to protect themselves against cannibalisation of voice revenue, has not been sanctioned by the communications regulator. This dual pricing system would allow the cellular operators to charge one price for normal data traffic, such as email, browsing and downloading, and then bill traffic that was identified as voice-over internet protocol.
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/ 27 November 2006
Imagine you were a foreign power that wanted to get rid of a dissident who had set up home in London. Would you a) push the troublemaker under a bus, b) have him mown down by a hit-and-run driver or c) arrange for him to be poisoned while eating in a crowded restaurant? If you wanted to make the death look natural, or just to keep things simple, you would presumably avoid the restaurant scenario.
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/ 27 November 2006
Since their election victory last January, Hamas leaders have come under fierce United States and European pressure to moderate their rejectionist stance and cut a deal with the moderate Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas. But now the squeeze on Ehud Olmert’s government is also growing as the "international community", fearing a region-wide implosion, gears up for another drive for peace.
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/ 27 November 2006
The campaign to ensure that Jacob Zuma succeeds Thabo Mbeki as president of South Africa has produced a virus that threatens the health of many of our key democratic institutions. The executive, the National Prosecuting Authority, the press and the judiciary have all fallen to the attack — and the coherence of the ruling party, itself a key to the success of our peaceful transition to constitutional democracy, has been shaken.
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/ 27 November 2006
More than a million Gautengers — one in six adults — run small businesses ranging from survivalist street hawking to sophisticated and fast-Âgrowing enterprises, a survey has found. Finscope project manager Darrell Beghin says the survey found there was an increasing vibrancy in Gauteng’s small-business sector.
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/ 27 November 2006
Historical injustices that have resulted in landlessness among Kenyans have been the focus of recent public discussions on a land policy — the first to be drawn up in the East African country. Previously, Kenya has had no clearly defined laws on how to manage land, leading to a breakdown in land administration. Disparities in land ownership, tenure insecurity and squatting have occurred, often resulting in conflict.
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/ 27 November 2006
It was midnight at the Charlooe Drinks Bar and business was flagging. Dozens of prostitutes, some barely 12, were hovering outside the main avenue of Castelo dos Sonhos (the Castle of Dreams), an isolated town in the northern state of Para that, until recently, was at the centre of Brazil’s illegal logging trade.
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/ 27 November 2006
And there I stood: eyes downcast, in all my crimson shame. As my eyes welled with the pools of my disgrace, and the tips of my (well-covered) ears burned, I felt myself transported to the cobbled streets of … Salem, Massachussets — and I could almost get a whiff of the smoke as the tinders licked at my (hosed) feet. My crime was read out: guilty of immodest dress unbefitting a woman of The Faith.
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/ 27 November 2006
It was, in retrospect, an age of soft-hat innocence. At the start of their deployment to Helmand last year, British soldiers acted like preening contestants in a military popularity contest. Paratroopers spurned helmets in favour of berets, learned pidgin Pashto and armed themselves with friendly smiles.
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/ 27 November 2006
With humanitarian groups sounding the alarm about the violence in eastern Chad near Sudan, the Chadian government has sent troops south to neighbouring Central African Republic to battle rebels there who, it said, are being backed by Sudan. Chad is already contributing troops to a regional peacekeeping force in CAR but the prime minister said last week that he wants to send more.