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/ 2 November 2004
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Americans started voting on Tuesday in one of the tightest presidential elections in decades after a long and often bitter campaign between Republican incumbent George Bush and his Democratic rival John Kerry. A huge turnout has been forecast, with Iraq and the war on terror dominating the campaign.
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/ 2 November 2004
One of the most powerful armed Islamists in north Africa, Amar Saifi, was on Monday behind bars in his home country of Algeria following the intervention of Libya’s Moammar Gadaffi. Saifi was the number two in Algeria’s main violent Islamist organisation, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, and responsible for the kidnapping of 32 foreign tourists in the Sahara desert last year.
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/ 2 November 2004
Rustenburg in the North West province has the distinction of having been South Africa’s fastest-growing urban area between 1996 and 2002, with an annual compound economic growth rate of 6%. The worst performance was put in by the Free State’s Goldfields, which showed an annual decline of 4,3% over the same period.
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/ 2 November 2004
My fondest political aphorism asserts that "there are only two ways out of politics: death or failure". There is something intrinsic, deep down in the psychological make-up of the politician that drives him or her on … and on and on. When Margaret Thatcher used this exact phrase a year before she was unceremoniously turfed out by the Tory party in Britain, she captured the quintessential blindness of the political animal, writes Richard Calland.
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/ 2 November 2004
In South Africa there are very few press ombudsmen, despite the spate of scandals that have bedeviled journalism in the last little while. The best known is currently Ed Linington, who hears complaints about all newspapers under his jurisdiction. One or two news organisations have an ”internal ombud”. The M&G has now joined that small club and has asked me, Franz Krüger, to come in, keep an eye on the standards of journalism and begin a dialogue with readers.
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/ 2 November 2004
At least nine people were killed on Tuesday in two separate car-bomb attacks in Baghdad, the Arab news channel al-Arabiya reported. At least five Iraqis died when a car bomb exploded outside a building of the Education Ministry in the capital’s Adhamiya district. The attack occurred after most officials had arrived for work.
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/ 2 November 2004
American porn mogul Larry Flynt says he may decide to go into exile if United States President George Bush is re-elected. ”If Bush is re-elected — but I don’t want to even consider the thought for one second — I really have to think about living somewhere else,” Flynt said early on Monday in a strip club on the Champs Elysees in Paris.
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/ 2 November 2004
Zimbabwe’s foreign minister Stan Mudenge said on Tuesday his ruling Zanu-PF party would not postpone parliamentary elections set for March next year. Last week opposition Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai lobbied both South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki and Mauritius premier Paul Berenger to have the polls postponed, saying there was insufficient time to prepare.
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/ 2 November 2004
The JSE Securities Exchange remained firm at midday on Tuesday with the market taking advantage of a weaker rand against the Untied States dollar. Resources counters led the charge, but gold stocks were fairly flat reflecting a volatile gold price.
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/ 2 November 2004
Subject to regulatory approvals, South African oil and chemicals group Sasol and Malaysian state oil company Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Petronas) are set to form South Africa’s largest liquid fuels business, following the signing of a joint venture
agreement between the two parties.