Scarcely noticed, the United States last month deployed its first ground-based missile interceptor at Fort Greely in Alaska. It was a significant step in the Bush administration’s ambitious and hugely expensive missile defence system — a true ”son of star wars” with profound implications for the rest of the world.
United States President George Bush bowed to election-year pressure on Monday and ended his opposition to the reforms urged by the congressional inquiry into the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks. ”We are a nation in danger,” he said, announcing the appointment of a national intelligence director on the day the US raised its alert level to orange for a number of financial institutions after uncovering details of specific threats.
US financial system ‘normal’
A new fuel management system is out to get fuel fraudsters and thieves. Fuelmaster Fleet works by way of an electronic identity tag in the vehicle’s fuel tank that communicates directly with the service station pump’s security system, allowing fuel to be dispensed and charged to the company’s account.
Children are not obliged to attend school in the year they turn six, Education Minister Naledi Pandor said on Monday. Children should be taken to school in the year that they turn seven, unless their parents can provide proof that their child was ready for school at an earlier age, the minister told reporters in Pretoria.
Let’s be honest: the first Mazda 323 was not a very exciting car. Enter the modern equivalent. The Mazda3 is to its ancestor what the latest laptop is to an abacus, with sophisticated electronic gimmickry providing comfort and safety levels that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.
To coincide with National Woman’s Day, <i>The Media</i> magazine celebrates the remarkable women chosen as South Africa’s "top 10 women in media" for the last year. Each woman listed has made an outstanding contribution to the development of the media industry in an economic, political, social or cultural sense, and each has therefore easily fulfilled the criterion for inclusion.
The announcement last month by the Medicines Control Council (MCC) that nevirapine should not be used as monotherapy to prevent mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV has caused much consternation, both in South Africa and abroad. Despite new doubts about the drug, it has saved the lives of thousands of babies in South Africa.
Children go to bed on empty stomachs because maintenance defaulters shrug off their duty to support them. When women are frustrated in their attempt to access maintenance, their children are denied the only source of income that stands between them and starvation. Too often maintenance becomes a battle between the parents, when it is should be about the rights of the children.
When British honey farmer Willie Robson blew the whistle on a fellow beekeeper, Richard Brodie, for potting Argentine honey and passing it off as Scottish borders honey, the resulting court case exposed some of the tough realities of an intensely competitive international business. Stinging accusations of foul play in the
beekeeping world have exposed the ruthless side of a global trade.
Since the start of a United Nations disarmament programme in Liberia in December 2003, much attention has been paid to the painfully difficult process of reintegrating the country’s rebel troops into society. Another — and equally important — operation is also underway, however: the reform of Liberia’s police force, blamed for a significant number of human rights abuses during the country’s civil war.