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/ 26 October 2006
China’s trade with Africa is set to top -billion this year, officials said on Thursday, as Beijing gears up to host a China-Africa forum that will deepen much-scrutinised investment ties. China has defended its growing trade ties and its more than -billion worth of investments on the continent, whose energy and mineral wealth it covets to fuel its booming economy.
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/ 26 October 2006
The Wallabies are set for some revolutionary positional changes on next month’s four-Test European tour as they look ahead to next year’s Rugby World Cup in France. Coach John Connolly is tinkering with a revamp of the backline to maximise Australia’s chances of challenging World Cup favourites New Zealand and France.
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/ 26 October 2006
The CIA tried to persuade Germany to silence European Union protests about the human rights record of one of the United States’s key allies in its clandestine torture flights programme, the Guardian can reveal. According to a secret intelligence report, the CIA offered to let Germany have access to one of its citizens, an al-Qaeda suspect being held in a Moroccan cell.
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/ 26 October 2006
The cost of bunking work in corporate South Africa is estimated at a minimum of R19,1-billion, with Mondays and Fridays the worst days for absenteeism, a fresh survey showed on Thursday. "Absenteeism is the single biggest cause of lost time and poor productivity that this country faces," says labour specialist Andrew Levy, who analysed the survey.
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/ 26 October 2006
The South African Cabinet has given its approval to the proposal to create six regional electricity distributors (REDs) which will be established as public entities under the auspices of the Electricity Distribution Industry. This was confirmed on Thursday — after the Cabinet’s meeting on Wednesday.
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/ 26 October 2006
To veil or not to veil is no longer the question in Egypt. From abject neighbourhoods to chic suburban enclaves Muslim women are instead mulling whether to opt for a strict coverall, or a hipper headscarf. After three decades of Islamic revival, bare-headed women have become a slender minority — and many of them are Coptic Christians
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/ 26 October 2006
Parkinson’s disease has become the latest battleground in the American midterm elections, with the rightwing talk radio host Rush Limbaugh locked in an unseemly wrangle with the actor and Parkinson’s sufferer Michael J Fox. Limbaugh was forced to apologise to the actor after he accused Fox of exaggerating the symptoms of his illness in an election television advert
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/ 26 October 2006
A Zimbabwean man has spent nine years in prison waiting to be tried for murder, Harare’s Herald newspaper reported on Thursday. Its website said a visiting judge found Marko Simakani in a remand prison last week, and he finally appeared in the High Court in Harare on Tuesday.
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/ 26 October 2006
An unmanned Delta rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral air force station in Florida on Wednesday carrying a pair of solar probes to track potentially disruptive solar storms. The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or Stereo, is designed to take three-dimensional pictures of the solar outbursts so scientists can pinpoint where the storms are heading.
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/ 26 October 2006
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South African taxpayers have contributed R10-million towards axed deputy president Jacob Zuma’s defence costs, the Star newspaper reports. The figure was reflected in the Presidency’s revised budget vote in Wednesday’s mini-budget tabled by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel.