On the surface, it seemed as if Alexis Quinlin’s biggest fault was name dropping. The New York-based entrepreneur could not resist telling potential investors in his firm how he had partied with Madonna and done deals with Mick Jagger, Richard Branson and Eric Clapton, or how he would collaborate with Quentin Tarantino on the next James Bond film.
Almost a year after Syria completed a humiliating military withdrawal from Lebanon amid predictions of imminent regime change in Damascus, President Bashar Assad is clawing back lost ground. Dozens of dissidents have been arrested in recent weeks.
Twenty-five years after the first Aids cases were reported, there is no sign of a halt to the pandemic that is likely to spread to every corner of the globe. A new United Nations Aids agency report declares that the world’s response to the disease that has infected about 65-million people and killed 25-million has been nowhere near adequate.
Al Gore has made his sharpest attack yet on the George Bush presidency, describing the current US administration as ”a renegade band of right-wing extremists”. The former vice-president has launched into the political fray more explicitly than he has previously done during his campaigning on the threat of global warming.
The United States said on Tuesday it has sent combat-troop reinforcements into Iraq, dashing hopes of a substantial withdrawal, as American commanders scrambled to contain a wave of violence and help the new Iraqi government assert control. About 1 500 soldiers were deployed in Anbar province.
An alleged member of an international fraud syndicate, believed to have been involved in defrauding local and foreign Standard Bank customers, is to appear in court on Thursday. The man was arrested after a joint investigation by the bank and the National Prosecuting Authority’s Scorpions unit into internet banking fraud.
The Cecelia Makiwane hospital in East London was again the scene of anger and protest on Tuesday, following the death of four babies at the hospital last week, media reports said. About 200 members of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) protested outside the hospital and, like the families, they want answers.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday he still plans to visit Zimbabwe, contradicting a government spokesperson who said his invitation was no longer valid. Annan has been planning for a year to visit Zimbabwe to see the outcome of a slum-clearance operation that has left about 700Â 000 people homeless.
Trade union Solidarity and resources company Kumba Resources started the first day of their annual wage negotiations with Kumba tabling an offer of 4%, while Solidarity demanded an increase of 12%, the union said on Tuesday. "Kumba’s offer to workers at the bottom levels puts them under the breadline in South Africa," Solidarity said.
Silas Masindi was not entirely surprised by his HIV test results. The dapper garment trader, who discovered earlier this year that he was infected with the Aids virus, admits to using condoms somewhat erratically before he remarried three years ago. "I would meet a girl, use a condom, but after four months stop using them," he says.