No image available
/ 1 November 2004
War-ravaged Burundi’s transitional president, Domitien Ndayizeye, said on Monday he would retire from politics at the end of his term in office, which is due to expire in April 2005. ”The last 18 months have been very tiring. I feel old enough not to continue in politics,” Ndayizeye, who is 52, told reporters.
No image available
/ 1 November 2004
Solidarity, the mainly white trade union, and the left-leaning Congress of South African Trade Unions were to work jointly on Monday to protest against retrenchments by fixed-line monopoly Telkom — by posting 25 statements on the door of the National Assembly. The Assembly is to debate the Telkom retrenchments on Tuesday.
No image available
/ 1 November 2004
”I know how hard it [is] for you to put food on your family,” a sympathetic United States President George Bush told baffled single mothers in one of his inimitable foot-in-mouth utterances. Just days ahead of Tuesday’s US presidential election, a new political film is taking a light-hearted poke at the lexicon of unique words and phrases invented by the leader of the free world.
No image available
/ 1 November 2004
Japan’s Hello Kitty, the moon-faced, mouthless white cat, celebrated her 30th birthday on Monday, evolving from a nameless feline on a cheap vinyl purse into the money-making global icon of cuteness. Tamaki Hirayoshi, a 37-year-old woman in Tokyo, has collected about 1Â 000 Hello Kitty products over three decades.
No image available
/ 1 November 2004
On the fringe of north India, five sweating men expertly scythe their way through a golden-green field of paddy. The air is thick with the whoosh of sharpened blades. Nearby, bullocks loll and veiled women walk carrying cowpats on their heads for use as fuel. Beneath the rural idyll, however, lies a village in torment because of a radical new population control measure: guns for sterilisation.
No image available
/ 1 November 2004
Widening the growing global Anglican rift over homosexuality, Anglican bishops in Africa said on Monday they would stop theological training of African clergy in Western institutions. Bishops also were studying creation of a separate, ”African” theology rejecting gay clergy and same-sex marriages, they said.
No image available
/ 1 November 2004
African leaders pitched on Monday for more trade and investment from Asia, saying they were pushing through economic and political reforms that will open up business opportunities in the continent. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo told the opening of the two-day conference in Tokyo that the continent of more than 750-million people was rich with resources for Asian investors.
No image available
/ 1 November 2004
Dozens of additional Rwandan troops left for Sudan’s troubled Darfur region on Monday to reinforce a tiny, but growing, African force widely seen as the main hope to stabilising the area, a defense spokesperson said. About 58 new troops are to join 165 others who arrived in Darfur over the weekend aboard United States air-force planes.
No image available
/ 1 November 2004
Pupils and teachers at Brandwacht Primary School near Mossel Bay on Monday were mourning the death of an 11-year-old pupil, Aubrey Peterson, killed by a collapsing wall. The Western Cape education department said four other pupils were injured in the accident on Friday. The wall that collapsed was under construction at the time.
No image available
/ 1 November 2004
In introducing the new Director General of her department, Lyndall Shope-Mafole, Minister of Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri on Monday said black economic empowerment (BEE) is an imperative, and as such South Africa needs a BEE charter that recognises such an imperative.