No image available
/ 19 November 2004
The world’s last major political personality cult could be fading, according to reports from North Korea. Portraits of the country’s ”Great General”, Kim Jong-il, have been removed from several prominent locations in Pyongyang, including some hotels and the People’s Cultural Palace, say news agencies and foreign observers.
No image available
/ 19 November 2004
Israel apologised to Egypt on Thursday after its soldiers fired across the border and killed three Egyptian policemen. Ariel Sharon, Israel’s Prime Minister, called Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s President, and expressed his ”deepest apologies” for the incident and promised a quick investigation.
No image available
/ 19 November 2004
Deaths among children infected with HIV in Africa could be almost halved if all those with symptoms were put on a simple, cheap and readily available antibiotic, new research has established. The positive results of a study of children in Zambia, carried out by the Medical Research Council and funded by the Department for International Development, are a rare breath of hope in the pandemic.
No image available
/ 19 November 2004
The South African Secret Service (SASS) is selling a luxury waters-edge property it bought less than three years ago as a discreet pow-wow venue for President Thabo Mbeki and his diplomatic guests. The 14ha Hartbeespoort Dam estate is being marketed at R26-million to R30-million — an all-time high in an area that has become a playground for Gauteng’s very rich.
No image available
/ 19 November 2004
The 10th anniversary of democracy is an important symbolic milestone for all South Africans, an opportunity to take stock, evaluate the past decade’s gains and setbacks, and plan for the next. On the eve of the Democratic Alliance’s congress in Durban this weekend, its leaders look at the future of the party and its challenges as the opposition, while a critic slams one of Tony Leon’s gurus.
No image available
/ 19 November 2004
Harmony’s Bernard Swanepoel and Gold Fields’s Ian Cockerill are determined men — determined not to lose in the corporate world. Neither could count on inherited wealth or influence. Both have worked their way up from the rockface. They are driven to succeed. Yet these two are face-to-face in one of South Africa’s more rancorous hostile takeovers. Harmony’s hostile bid for Gold Fields may be secretly
decided in the Kremlin.
No image available
/ 19 November 2004
Having turned the screws on disparate elements in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi, South African mediators know about applying pressure.
The players in Côte d’Ivoire — who have made a pig’s ear out of a carefully crafted French peace deal and a hash of an African follow-up pact — are about to learn this. On Saturday President Thabo Mbeki will see Guillame Soro of the New Forces rebel movement in Côte d’Ivoire.
No image available
/ 19 November 2004
Towards the end of his life the American anthropologist and author, Robert Ardrey, retired to Kalk Bay. I was to get to know him for a few brief weeks. In a conversation in January 1980, he spoke with enthusiasm about “some guy up in Zululand who is saying that crocodiles have maternal instincts. I was able to tell Ardrey that the “guy in Zululand’s" name was Tony Pooley and that he was a good friend.
No image available
/ 19 November 2004
Because it breeds deep inside forests, <i>Anopheles dirus</i>, a deadly species of malaria-carrying mosquito had been evading detection by regular ground surveys. So Aruna Srivastava from the Malaria Research Centre in New Delhi devised another approach to find them. This is a tale of how space-age technology can fight age-old enemies of man.
No image available
/ 19 November 2004
Truworths CEO Michael Mark has hotly denied trade union claims that the retail chain is increasing cheap imports at the cost of local manufacturing jobs. "We find it very frustrating that they are targeting us in this way when we have done so much to ensure we import as little as possible, while other retailers have not," said Mark.