Students, security personnel and police engaged in running battles at Durban’s Mangosuthu University of Technology on Wednesday. Rubber bullets were used by university security personnel and the public-order policing unit to disperse about 500 protesting students at the Umlazi campus, south of Durban.
Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh Kambakhsh is a young journalism student at the University of Balkh in northern Afghanistan. A few weeks ago, he was sentenced to death for blasphemy after a summary trial in which he had no legal representation and no opportunity to defend himself.
John Aitchison writes an open letter to Minister of Education Naledi Pandor on his unpleasant experiences after being appointed to a ministerial committee on literacy in January 2006. He was appointed lead writer of the committee’s report, which was approved by the Cabinet in November 2006.
No one in South Africa has been trained to tune a piano for nearly a decade — leaving only about 50 ageing piano tuners in the country. The South African Association of Professional Piano Tuners is now concerned that unqualified people could damage the industry as well as the piano in the corner of your living room.
Malawi lawmakers on Tuesday began examining draft legislation aimed at ridding the HIV/Aids-plagued country of quacks claiming to cure the pandemic through such remedies as sex with virgins, health authorities said. "When it passes into law, all traditional healers claiming to cure Aids will be dealt with," Mary Shaba, head of HIV/Aids issues for Malawi’s Health Ministry, said.
Boozing into the night might inhibit coherent speech, but a Japanese company bets it will make workers communicate better. And it’s even willing to pay for it. Japan General Estate said on Tuesday it is planning to dole out thousands of dollars a month for its employees to go on the town in a bid to help communication.
Israeli war planes on Tuesday carried out raids on the north of the Gaza Strip, killing two Palestinians and wounding two others, a Palestinian medical source said. Israel had vowed on Monday to keep hitting Gaza, even as troops pulled out of the Hamas-run territory after clashes that killed more than 120 Palestinians and dealt a blow to peace talks.
Venezuela and Colombia were locked in a tense stand-off on Monday, with explosive accusations levelled against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez a day after he ordered tanks and troops to the border. There was no sign of imminent conflict but the war of words escalated when Colombia accused Chávez of bankrolling Marxist rebels.
I’ve become paranoid about posting thoughts to <i>Thought Leader</i>, the <i>Mail & Guardian Online</i>’s blogging platform for the country’s intelligentsia. As I write this, the website’s resident thinkers are discussing the meaning of life. So you’ll understand why I’m hesitating over leading some particular thoughts.
Runaway oil prices roared higher on Monday to strike a record high $103,95 per barrel as traders reacted to the plunging United States dollar amid expectations that the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) will hold output this week.
An Iranian court has ordered a man to buy his wife 124 000 roses after she filed a complaint against her "stingy" husband to claim her dowry, a press report said on Monday. "After 10 years of marriage Hengameh had decided to claim her dowry of 124 000 red roses to punish her very stingy husband," the <i>Etemad</i> newspaper said.
Every day, well-heeled citizens clatter in and out of the Rishengchang, China’s first bank. But the ledgers are dusty and unused; the visitors are not customers but tourists. The most notable visitor to the museum, President Hu Jintao, may well recall the lesson in hubris as he stares at the biggest economic challenge that he has faced to date.
Not many former chief executives stay on at their old haunts once a successor is appointed and they’re no longer on the board. Thulani Gcabashe, however, can still be found in the corridors of Eskom’s cavernous Megawatt Park — even though he no longer works at the utility.
Bedrooms (or the Oval Office, as the case may be) and boardrooms: they tend to share a characteristic — closed curtains. And when you ask the big guy whether he’s been fooling around, literally or figuratively, the answer all too often is "trust me". But once in a blue moon a reluctant witness comes forward with a stained blue dress. Does Hillary trust her man? No way.
On the segregated campus of South Africa’s University of the Free State this weekend, tensions were thunderously high as black students planned a mass protest for Monday against the white students who made a video humiliating their black cleaners.<br><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/319216/video-icon.gif"> <a href="http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=333647&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national/" target="_blank" class="standardtextsmall"><b>With live video</b></a>
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/ 29 February 2008
The price of New York crude oil hit an all-time high point of $103,05 per barrel on Friday owing to record weakness of the dollar, but then fell back, traders said. And the price of gold reached an historic peak of $976,32 per ounce. "This was part of a broad-based commodities run based on the continued weakness of the dollar," said Petromatrix analyst Olivier Jakob.
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/ 29 February 2008
The retail price of all grades of petrol will increase by 61 cents per litre on Wednesday March 5 after increasing by 17 cents a litre last month, the Department of Minerals and Energy announced on Friday. The retail price of a litre of 95 octane unleaded petrol in Gauteng increases to R8,25, and to R8,01 at the coast — new highs.
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/ 28 February 2008
Four young men in the Free State could hardly have known that their video of a demeaning mock initiation of black university employees would be flashed on the world’s TV screens.
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/ 28 February 2008
Murowa Diamonds — Zimbabwe’s sole operating diamond miner — recorded a 40% drop in production in 2007, owing to frequent power failures and machine breakdowns, the company said. Murowa is 78% owned by London-based mining firm Rio Tinto.
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/ 28 February 2008
Last week the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> reported that the South African Communist Party planned to axe two senior Cape Town members for daring to criticise undemocratic practices at the party’s congress last year and suggesting that it is obsessed with "individuals" (read Zuma) to the detriment of its professed role as the party of the working class.
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/ 27 February 2008
Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, whose victory in Sunday’s presidential election is all but assured, on Wednesday took a day out from his unofficial campaign … in order to campaign. National television showed Medvedev responding to the audience’s queries about pensions and salaries.
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/ 27 February 2008
The European Commission fined Microsoft a record €899-million on Wednesday for failing to comply with a 2004 antitrust ruling against the United States software giant. The fine comes on top of the €497-million that Microsoft already had to pay after Europe’s top antitrust watchdog found the company guilty in 2004 of abusing its dominant market power.
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/ 27 February 2008
The European Commission fined Microsoft a record €899-million on Wednesday for failing to comply with a 2004 antitrust ruling against the United States software giant. The fine comes on top of the €497-million that Microsoft already had to pay after Europe’s top antitrust watchdog found the company guilty in 2004 of abusing its dominant market power.
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/ 26 February 2008
French President Nicolas Sarkozy sharply criticised the chairperson of scandal-hit bank Société Générale in an interview published on Tuesday, saying his response to billion-euro losses was "not normal". "When the president of a company sees losses of that magnitude and does not draw conclusions from it, that’s not normal," Sarkozy said.
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/ 25 February 2008
South Africa is to cull elephants for the first time since 1995, lifting a moratorium on the practice to bring ballooning populations under control, the government said on Monday. Since the government introduced a moratorium on culling in 1995, the number of elephants has risen from about 8 000 to over 20 000.
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/ 25 February 2008
The first microbicide to reach the final phase of testing has failed to prevent HIV transmission, researchers announced this week. Testing of the microbicide, Carraguard, was carried out over a three-year period on 6 000 women in South Africa and was completed in March last year.
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/ 24 February 2008
I am a proponent of same-sex marriages and as a Christian minister of religion, I want to make it very clear that the Bible nowhere gives an indication that such marriages should be condemned. Most of the opposition to same-sex marriages could be ascribed to a lack of knowledge of what both marriage and homosexuality mean, writes André Müller.
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/ 22 February 2008
A cyclone that swept across Madagascar this week killed 29 people and left nearly 70 000 homeless or otherwise affected, local authorities said on Friday. Dia Stivanley, spokesperson for the National Office for Management of Risks and Catastrophes, said 12 of the island’s 22 regions had been hit by Cyclone Ivan, a category-three storm.
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/ 22 February 2008
February 28 marks the end of the tax year in South Africa. There are 10 points South African private investors need to tick off before then, relating to retirement savings, capital-gains tax, travel-expense claims, donations, offshore investment and more.
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/ 22 February 2008
A formal inquiry by the Department of Labour into the exposure of poisonous fumes at a Cato Ridge manganese company will begin on Monday. The inquiry follows six cases of manganism that were reported at the Assmang plant. Manganism is acquired by overexposure to airborne manganese.
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/ 22 February 2008
There has been intense speculation not just in financial markets, but also at the headquarters of the Treasury over Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s political future, and the possibility that new political leadership would try to push "team finance" in a different policy direction.
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/ 22 February 2008
The accountants at the Treasury finally seem to have heard the desperate pleas from the Department of Defence. While the defence budget is set to increase by 6,1% in the next three years, the gradual winding down of major equipment acquisitions means slightly more is going to be left over to keep the military functional.