Reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has boasted of being an "internet expert," reports said on Saturday. The communist state keeps itself closed to the outside world to prevent so-called spiritual pollution from subverting its hard-line socialist system.
Author Steven Otter moved to Khayelitsha in 2002 and has chronicled his experience in a new book. Here is an extract.
<i>Gaining Ground? “Rights” and “Property” in South African Land Reform</i> by Deborah James (Wits University Press) examines how land reform policy and practice in post-apartheid South Africa have been produced and contested. This is an extract.
An Australian abattoir has beefed up security because thieves in its slaughterhouse were stealing cattle gallstones, which are worth almost their weight in gold, a report said on Friday. The Borthwicks Meatworks in Queensland state will cut the pockets off its employees’ overalls and conduct random searches to protect the gallstones.
President Thabo Mbeki ordered a safety review on Friday of all South Africa’s mines after a successful operation to rescue thousands of workers who were trapped underground. A statement from his office said Mbeki had called on Minister of Minerals and Energy Buyelwa Sonjica to conduct an across-the-board audit following the accident.
Visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel was expected to urge South African President Thabo Mbeki in talks in Pretoria on Friday to increase pressure for a resolution to the crisis in neighbouring Zimbabwe. German sources said Merkel was determined to press Mbeki to do more to ensure an end to alleged human rights abuses in the country.
Early users of Facebook.com are responding with mixed reactions to the social network website’s attempts to mass market itself. As Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, a commentary on the collapse and revival of the American community, once lamented: "Do I want to be friends with my uncle?" The garlic and crucifix initially keeping the commercial monsters at bay was the ".edu" domain, which allowed only students and faculty members on the network.
The December national conference of the ANC is an event of central significance for all South Africans. The ANC played the leading role in South Africa’s transition to democracy and has been the massively dominant player in our first decade of freedom. Conference delegates will therefore be making decisions that touch and indeed shape the lives of the nearly 50-million citizens of our country.
Mining is and always will be a dangerous business. But every time there is a seismic event, a rockfall, or, as happened this week, a broken lift, a new round of muttering begins.
Fresh from summit diplomacy with North Korea, South Korea’s government now faces an entirely new challenge — trying to set international quality and size standards for condoms. The five-day meeting, organised by the International Organisation for Standardisation and the Seoul government, will begin next Monday on the southern resort island of Jeju.
What shameful times we live in, buffeted by spin and lies. When the events of the past two weeks are recorded in history, will they appear as the turning point? When a president failed to rise above his personal ambitions, yank the skeletons from his party’s closet and secure democracy and its constitutionally protected institutions?
Burma’s military regime kept up the pressure on its people on Wednesday after last week’s bloody crackdown on protesters as the European Union agreed in principle to punish the junta with sanctions. Troops who last week killed at least 13 and arrested over 1 000 people continued overnight arrests and mounted patrols to strike terror into the population.
Fierce clashes erupted in Mogadishu between Ethiopian-backed Somali forces and Islamist fighters, with both sides claiming to have inflicted heavy casualties, officials and witnesses said on Wednesday. The overnight fighting was focused around the former Defence Ministry building in southern Mogadishu and resulted in a fire in Bakara market.
A Thai chef cooked up fears of a chemical attack in London when fumes from his eye-wateringly hot chilli sauce led to the emergency services being called out. Chalemchai Tangjariyapoon, who works at the Thai Cottage restaurant in Soho, was dry-frying bird’s eye chillies as he prepared a huge batch of nam prik pao.
The Centre for Development and Enterprise hosted the first in a new series of CDE Conversations, which are set to provide a platform for diverse voices to participate on key challenges facing South Africa. Set in a debate format, the event focused on race-based policies of redress and the question of their impact on economic growth and development. The need for restoration is undisputed, but does South Africa have the correct policies?
When Professor Chris Brink left as vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Stellenbosch last year, South Africa lost one of the last of the scholar-leaders to head a national university. The scholar-leader, still the prize appointment in leading research universities in much of the world, has been displaced by the manager-politician.
For Totsi Memela-Khambula mentoring is an opportunity to give in a developmental relationship between two people. It inspires the one being mentored towards further success and assists him or her to work through issues and challenges in a safe and objective environment in order to reach their full potential in terms of skills, behaviour and knowledge.
“Often our time and effort is shared without reward except for the greater reward that we have been instrumental in developing someone within the company who becomes an essential member of the ‘family’ and who can be recognised for their potential in our field of expertise.”
Tina Eboka follows the YWCA motto, “Lift as you climb”, as she makes her way up the corporate ladder. In line with this way of thinking, Eboka has served as mentor to “too many people to list”. The Standard Bank Group Executive: Corporate Affairs believes that mentoring is good for succession planning and sustainable growth and that if well planned it does not consume that much of an individual’s time.
A town in southern Spain on the weekend tossed what local officials said was the world’s largest salad, involving 6 700kg of lettuce, tomato, onion, pepper and olives. It took 20 cooks over three hours to mix all the ingredients needed to make the salad in the town of Pulpi in the province of Almeria, one of Spain’s main fruit and vegetable growing areas.
A Pakistani man broke the world-record for "ear-lifting" in Vienna on Sunday, carrying almost 62kg from a cord attached to his right ear. Zafar Gill’s feat earned him a place in the <i>Guinness World Records</i>, as part of a day of record-breaking attempts in the Austrian capital, organised under the slogan "Vienna — Recordbreaker".
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/ 30 September 2007
After early optimism, a sense of hopelessness now exists in Yangon. Communication to the outside world has been largely cut and, according to diplomats in the region, up to 200 protesters are dead. The official death count from the government is nine. But no one believes the government.
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/ 30 September 2007
The suspension of South Africa’s National Director of Public Prosecutions amid silence by President Thabo Mbeki has led to concerns of government meddling in the country’s justice system. Mbeki’s integrity came under fire as his suspension of National Prosecuting Authority chief Vusi Pikoli was linked to the alleged pending arrest of police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi.
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/ 28 September 2007
A battle for the hearts and minds of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) veterans has started among ANC leaders as the vets meet this weekend at their national conference in Boksburg to reclaim their centrality in ANC politics. President Thabo Mbeki last week bestowed the Order of Mendi for Bravery on MK’s Luthuli Detachment, in a move read by his critics as a measure to appease the military veterans bemoaning their isolation from the ANC.
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/ 28 September 2007
The latest book reviews from the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>’s leading reviewers.
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/ 28 September 2007
Stealing the Scream: The Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece by Edward Dolnick (Icon) One snowy night in 1994, while the world’s attention was on the first day of the Olympic Winter Games being held in Norway, two men in a stolen car raced across the snow, placed a ladder against the wall of the national […]
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/ 28 September 2007
The retail price of 91 unleaded and 93 unleaded and lead-replacement petrol will rise by 9 cents a litre on Wednesday October 3, the Department of Minerals and Energy announced on Friday. The price of 95 unleaded and lead-replacement petrol will increase by 10 cents a litre. The wholesale price of diesel — all grades — will rise by 23 cents a litre.
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/ 28 September 2007
For too long African progress has been measured and metered from outside the continent. Be it the United Nations, the global think-tanks or international civil society, it’s been up to others always to keep us on our democratic toes. So the inaugural Ibrahim Index of African Governance, released this week, is a vital symbol of a continent attempting to take its own bull by the horns.
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/ 27 September 2007
While the archaeologists of our imagination once used to dig up pots and pans, or hoards of coins and shimmering artefacts, today their work revolves around the almost forensic analysis of bones, plant remains and residues. It is breathtaking what they can learn from these investigations.
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/ 27 September 2007
A man staggering and groping like a blind man and swearing like a sailor. That was the picture painted of Pretoria High Court Judge Nkola Motata this week.
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/ 27 September 2007
A Japanese dairy company on Thursday announced the launch of super-premium milk for stressed-out adults — at the price of $43 for a bottle of 900ml, or one quart. Tokyo-based Nakazawa Foods will launch the "Adult Milk" line of products in October, targeting "adults who live in a stressful society", the company said in a statement.
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/ 25 September 2007
Terry Crawford-Browne has done something incredible. He has spent R5-million on a battle from which he stands to make nothing: his campaign to expose corruption in South Africa’s multibillion-rand arms deal. Not many people can understand this in an era of greed and opportunism.