The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged half a billion dollars to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria, the fund announced on Wednesday. The promise came in the run-up to the 16th International Aids Conference, opening in the Canadian city of Toronto on Sunday.
Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army rebels on Wednesday stormed out of peace talks with the government demanding that the latter declare a ceasefire to help efforts to end their two-decade civil war, officials said. "We stormed out of the talks after we informed the mediator that we are not ready to proceed with the negotiations," Obonyo Olweny said.
A new study by researchers in the US says African healthcare workers are contracting HIV faster than they are being lured abroad by better-paying jobs
Zimbabwe’s annual inflation rate has declined to 993,6% in July from 1 184,6%, the country’s Central Statistical Office (CSO) said on Wednesday. "The year-on-year rate of inflation in July 2006 was 993,6%, shedding 191 percentage points on the June rate of 1 184,6%," acting CSO director Moffat Nyoni told a news conference.
Hundreds of New Zealand motorists who claimed their vehicles were hearses so they could pay reduced registration fees face prosecution. The scam came to light last month when a woman claimed on talk-back radio that she and her friends registered their vehicles as hearses because they carried frozen chickens home from the supermarket.
Members of the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers’ Union (Saccawu) employed by the Shoprite Group are to embark on a national strike on Thursday after wage talks ended in a deadlock on Monday. The union has also called for a boycott of stores within the Shoprite fold of companies.
Inspectors from South Africa’s Department of Labour carried out "blitzes" in the Free State province this week but the vast majority of workplaces targeted were found to be compliant with the country’s employment equity laws, a spokesperson for Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana said on Tuesday.
A woman who fell through the floor of an old house in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, while having sex had to be pulled out of the basement by rescuers using a firefighter’s ladder, officials said on Tuesday. "A couple from the street entered the courtyard of an old house under renovation, and the woman fell through the floor while apparently having sex," they said.
Nedbank on Tuesday became the first bank to offer bank accounts to thousands of informal traders operating in the Durban city centre in Ethekwini, KwaZulu-Natal. This project is being coordinated together with the Informal Sector Empowerment Cooperative, an organisation that manages over 10 000 traders who operate in the informal retail sector.
Mark Fish is one of South Africa’s most successful and best loved soccer players. Just back from the World Cup, he talks to Jocelyn Newmarch about investing in platinum and getting a Harley for Christmas
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), speaking ahead of the Congress of South African Trade Union’s upcoming ninth national congress from September 18 to 21, says stronger leadership is needed from Cosatu for workers to confront "white power" or else "all would be doomed".
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=zuma_report"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/243078/zuma.jpg" align=left border=0></a>South African Revenue Service (Sars) commissioner Pravin Gordhan is to be asked by South Africa’s official opposition whether the Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust has been registered as a non-profit organisation and whether Sars would pursue any donors who made donations to the trust for a donations tax.
In case anyone was wondering about the incredible upsurge in credit advertising recently, the ombudsman for banking services believes that credit providers are making hay while the sun shines before the final phase of the National Credit Act. “We suspect, from what we have heard", said advocate John Simpson, complaints investigation manager for the banking ombudsman.
A diverse group has gathered at the Naziema Isaacs library in Khayelitsha outside Cape Town in response to a notice about a writers’ workshop. It represents a cross-section of the community: 12 year olds in school tracksuits; teenage girls; young men with funky hairstyles; a matron with a genial face alongside older men in formal jackets.
The case against two senior Scorpions investigators arrested on Saturday for alleged involvement in a drug-smuggling syndicate has been struck from the roll by the Kempton Park Magistrate’s Court. The case was dismissed on Monday by the senior public prosecutor for lack of evidence, said a National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson.
The Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) has dismissed as "inaccurate" a report that the government has reneged on an agreement to sell the telecommunications infrastructure owned by power utility Eskom to the second national operator (SNO) that could result in further delays in introducing competition to Telkom.
History repeats itself with mind-numbing regularity. I had just put down Canadian General Romeo Dallaire’s account of his failed United Nations peacekeeping mission to Rwanda in 1994 when another war exploded in the Middle East, and yet another feeble UN mission donned their blue berets and stumbled into the line of fire between the belligerents.
Sandton hosted the prestigious Businesswoman of the Year Awards recently. But back in the boardroom, women are still treated differently despite empowerment legislation, say some of South Africa’s top female business leaders. Empowerment pioneer Gloria Serobe has been named Corporate Businesswoman of the Year for 2006.
The bright yellow Honda dirt bike roars down the vacant Baghdad parking lot before popping a wheelie and continuing another dozen metres on its back wheel alone. The rider then spins the bike to a halt in a swirl of pungent exhaust fumes, burnt rubber tyre tracks and a burst of applause from young men and boys who have gathered to watch Iraq’s impromptu motorcycle club.
We in the media hold ourselves up as guardians of the greater good and as supplicants to the Constitution. A preliminary study focusing the camera on the state of women in the industry shows how far we still have to go. The survey’s portrayal is not flattering. One male editor assessed a woman trainee by asking whether she was "man enough" for the job, write Ferial Haffajee.
Patricia de Lille’s Independent Democrats (ID) has come out in support of a march organised by the Coalition for Sanctions against Israel, which is taking place in Cape Town on Saturday. "The ID has always stood on a platform from where human rights abuses must be condemned wherever they occur in the world," said De Lille.
As an ordained rainbow pessimist, last week’s aggravated pronouncements by President Mbeki sent my worst imaginings into a tailspin. As I read our president’s rousing "wake-up" speech to his ANC colleagues, a feeling of intense dismay slowly cloaked me. Here was I, content to go on feeding my racist prejudices from a seemingly endless smorgasbord.
In an extract from a forthcoming catalogue, fundis reflect on South African Fashion Week’s first decade.
There are two approaches to mathematics in this world, and both are elegantly laid bare by a bigamist, noisily en route to St Ives. This wanderer, you will recall, was accompanied by seven wives, each of whom had seven sacks. Every sack contained seven cats, and every cat had seven kits. Given the general pandemonium that this caravan would have created as it passed by, caterwauling and kvetching, one could forgive roving census-takers for fudging their figures that day.
At the end of last month, some of the world’s most powerful companies took a first step towards saving the Amazon rainforest from the ravages of soya cultivation. An unlikely union of Greenpeace, McDonald’s and leading United Kingdom supermarkets successfully pressured multinational United States-based commodities brokers into signing a two-year moratorium on buying soya from newly deforested land in the Amazon.
Jacob Zuma has finally unveiled his conspiracy claims and, after all the hype, the evidence he presents is surprisingly insubstantial. One thread of his voluminous application for a permanent dismissal of the charges is his claim that the case is essentially malicious, and has been pursued to stop him becoming president.
Following a process of consultation in all of the branches, members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said on Thursday that they had arrived at a decision to reject the offer Kumba Resources made on Wednesday. "Members also feel that their contribution needs to be recognised and, as such, affirmed," said Eddie Majadibodu, NUM’s chief negotiator.
Unless alternative sources of funding are found, the high demands on the National Skills Fund are threatening the future of small, micro and medium enterprises in need of skills and employment-creating mechanisms, said Minister Labour Membathisi Mdladlana.
The new Auditing Profession Act has delivered a "world-class" regulator says Kariem Hoosain, CEO of the Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors (IRBA), speaking at the launch of the IRBA. Hoosain said: "I have just returned from a trip to Canada where the senior partner of one of the largest international audit firms told me the IRBA was in his opinion the strongest regulator in the world."
Buyelwa Sonjica, the Minister of Minerals and Energy Affairs, has welcomed the findings of an inquest that found the negligence on the part of Northam Platinum could not be ruled out in the deaths of nine workers in an underground fire at the company’s Zondereinde mine near Thabazimbi two years ago.
Zimbabwean shops and businesses were on Tuesday slashing zeros from their prices as the country started adjusting to a redenominated currency introduced by the central bank. But ordinary people pondered whether this signalled that the country’s economic fortunes were improving.
Wednesday’s talks between the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Kumba Resources failed to find a solution to the current strike action affecting the company, the union said on Thursday. "The meeting, which took the whole day, ended without offering a clear sign of an end to the deadlock," the statement added.