The Constitutional Court is due to hear an application by the Department of Health on Tuesday about its controversial medicine pricing regulations. Part of the regulations, which were introduced last May to make medicines more affordable, include formulas to set the manufacturer’s price and cap the profit that pharmacists may make from selling medicines.
Controversial vitamin therapist Matthias Rath has blitzed Cape Town townships with pamphlets and posters attacking the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) as a spreader of ”disease and death among our people” and the Advertising Standards Authority as ”helping to protect drug industry monopolies”. It emerged this week that the South African National Civics Organisation in Khayelitsha has endorsed the pamphlet.
South Africa’s film industry has exploded on to the world stage with a spate of award-winning movies in the space of a few weeks. The domestic audience, though, remains in Hollywood’s thrall. Yesterday, the poignant tale of a woman infected with the Aids virus, narrowly missed out on an Oscar for best foreign language film. It was the first South African film to be nominated for an Oscar.
South African stars Natalie du Toit, Handri de Beer and Charles Bouwer showed just why they were part of the national team to the Paralympics in Athens last year, as the SA records kept crashing at the Nedbank Championships for the Physically Disabled in Durban on Monday.
Top seed Lindsay Davenport resorted to a plea for divine intervention on Monday as wind whipped desert sand around the court at the dust-plagued ,1-million Indian Wells Masters. The top seed, like 2004 men’s finalist Tim Henman, another who did it tough in gales of more than 50kph, survived what turned quickly into an unpleasant competitive experience.
A South African battalion commander will probably be sent home after alleged involvement in sexual misconduct in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), News24 reported on Tuesday. The South African Defence Force said the United Nations was investigating charges against ”a member of the South African contingent in the DRC”.
Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa on Monday announced the department’s plan to encourage the formation of co-operatives as part of government’s job creation strategy. ”Internationally we have seen how co-operatives are an important part of many economies and the contribution they make to society,” said Mpahlwa.
Operations at Spoornet are ”settling down” and the rail utility is on track with its planned improvements, Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin said on Monday. Speaking at Spoornet’s offices in Johannesburg, he told journalists that Spoornet was moving forward after years of under-investment.
After almost 14 years the Masterbond curatorship was concluded by an order of the Cape High Court on Monday. The three Masterbond curators said in a statement their appointment had been cancelled by the court order, subject to certain conditions.
Prosecutors are asking a judge to permit evidence at Phil Spector’s murder trial that the record producer has a history of pulling guns on women, according to court filings. The prosecution motion lists nine occasions dating to 1972 when Spector allegedly pointed a gun at someone.