Cheerleaders and band majorettes in Texas could soon be barred from performing bump-and-grind routines in an effort to make Friday-night football games more "family friendly," according to a Bill working its way through the state legislature. Representative Al Edwards proposed last week to bar "sexually oriented" performances.
The Aids pandemic carries the face of a woman, former president Nelson Mandela told thousands of people gathered at Fancourt, George, on Saturday night for his second Aids benefit concert. The purpose of the 46664 concert was to give a voice to the women of Africa in the fight against Aids, he said.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Friday said that the recently announced closure of clothing manufacturer Rex Trueform’s Salt River plant threatened to put another 1Â 000 people out of work in the Western Cape and bring the clothing, textile and leather industries one step closer to complete collapse.
No action has been taken against the former chairperson of the Ethekwini Metro council audit committee, Mdu Msomi, who was last year accused of attempting to cream R1-million off a legal settlement between the council and Rainbow Chickens.
Allegations came to light last year that Msomi indicated that the city was prepared to accept an offer of R6-million, provided R1-million of that was paid to the Singila Trust.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/199502/Zim_icon.GIF" align=left>The African National Congress is presenting a unified front on the March 31 elections in Zimbabwe, but behind the scenes there is increasing debate in the ruling party about how to deal with the political and economic crisis north of the Limpopo.
Ninety percent blind in both eyes, Babe Simelane, who estimates he is 72-years old, could make out only the roughest outline of his son’s face when he died from an Aids-related illness last year, leaving two young sons. Without government assistance or a pension scheme to support him, Simelane relies on the kindness of neighbours. Although 69% of Swazis live on less than $1 a day, he envies those who can obtain even a fraction of that amount.
An unusual half-page letter was published in a recent edition of the <i>Cape Times</i>. Printed in a large red font, the letter had no graphic ambitions. It was a letter but it was marked across the top as an advertisement, a necessary qualification in case the newspaper is identified as the source of the material. Congratulations are, nonetheless, due to the <i>Cape Times</i> for running it.
The African National Congress is presenting a unified front on the March 31 elections in Zimbabwe, but behind the scenes there is increasing debate in the ruling party about how to deal with the political and economic crisis north of the Limpopo. Many in the ANC are increasingly uncomfortable with the approach of the government and the party.
The truth is out at last. Those most affected by that truth cannot read this editorial, but there is at least reason to believe officialdom is about to act on the national emergency of adult illiteracy. The 11th year of our democracy is late in the day for the national government to have noticed that about 40% of South African adults — eight million to 10-million people — cannot read or write, and so face bleak futures.
With 2005 being World Year of Physics, this particular field of science is being celebrated in style by some international physicists of note at this year’s Sasol SciFest. Among them are Professor Neil Turok, Wendy Sadler and Dr Tanya Lake.
Danish intelligence services on Tuesday said they have launched a full-blown advertising campaign to recruit spies capable of digging up information on international terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The Scandinavian country is looking for ways to expand its own ability to gather sensitive information.
European soothsayers have thrown their weight behind United Nations prosecutors in their stand-off with the Croatian government over fugitive war crimes suspect Ante Gotovina, saying he is hiding in or near Croatian territory, a report said on Wednesday. Five clairvoyants were consulted by the <i>Globus</i> weekly.
Never since independence has Zimbabwe desperately needed President Robert Mugabe as much as it does now. The country, the ruling party and the opposition are all in chaos and only he can get the nation out of this hole. Zimbabwe faces an acute leadership crisis that only Mugabe has the capacity to resolve, if he so decides. He Mugabe still has the nation’s future in his hands.
"British Prime Minister Tony Blair has declared that the two issues at the centre of the G8 Summit this July will be African poverty and global climate change. These may seem to be distinct issues. In fact, they are linked. A trip I took to a village in the Tigre region in northern Ethiopia shows why," writes Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
South African banking group Absa, which is the target for a takeover by the United Kingdom’s Barclays group, confirmed on Tuesday that it has pulled out of talks to acquire a 49% stake in the state-owned Zambia National Commercial Bank. Analysts believe that the scuppering of the deal has put the Zambian government in a bit of quandary.
South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma will host the Vice-President of the Presidium of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Yang Hyong Sop, who is scheduled to pay an official visit to South Africa from Wednesday to Sunday. According to foreign affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa, Zuma will brief his counterpart on peacekeeping and conflict resolution efforts on the continent.
Most South Africans are proud to be South African, but race relations remain fraught, the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) has found. The findings, in the council’s <i>South African Social Attitudes Survey</i>, raise the question of whether an overarching national identity really matters for the formation of a united, non-racist society, said the HSRC’s Marlene Roefs.
A five-year-old boy in southern China survived a fall from a sixth floor apartment when his trousers snagged on a washing line, a news report said on Tuesday. The boy, who fell after climbing to a window of the apartment, was snagged by the trousers and suspended upside down outside an apartment on the fifth floor.
A Turkish man managed to get the pension of his mother for two years after her death, posing as an elderly woman to the local bank and neighbours, the mass-circulation <i>Sabah</i> newspaper reported on Saturday. He was caught only after he forgot to change his voice in response to a question by a bank clerk.
For North Carolina-based football fan Chris Barrett, the trip to the United Kingdom to watch his favourite team in action was a long-cherished dream, after years of saving money. If only the match had not been cancelled. Barrett, a 36-year-old United States schoolteacher, was putting a brave face on the disappointment on Saturday.
The trade union Solidarity said on Friday that it is undertaking a full investigation into accidents at Harmony Gold’s mining operations in the Free State, which it said have claimed 13 lives over the past six months. The union had what it called "incisive" talks with the principal inspector of mines for the Free State in Welkom earlier on Friday.
Botswana has started providing anti-retroviral drugs to soldiers in an effort to mitigate the impact of HIV/Aids on its armed forces. The programme, described as "a key watershed in safeguarding the security of the nation", is expected to target an estimated 5 000 infected soldiers and their dependents.
I wrote to the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> two weeks ago to respond to numerous articles that Mike van Graan had written against the Department of Arts and Culture. My article appeared as an edited letter to the editor. The self-appointed "god" of the arts, Van Graan, then had the unfair advantage of responding to my whole article. I find this unethical, writes Director General of the Department of Arts and Culture Itumeleng Mosala.
There’s a lot of baggage associated locally with the word "protest". Generally speaking, it has become a word with a whole bunch of hidden meanings, depending on who is using it. When the government uses it, it tends to be talking about the "good old days" of anti-apartheid protest against the <i>previous</i> government. But things have take a different turn these days …
In an experiment designed to test out one of the oldest arguments in the battle of the sexes, a British village is to be temporarily stripped of its womenfolk to see if the remaining men are able to cope. The stunt will be carried out in Harby, a tiny community in northern England, and filmed for a BBC reality television series called <i>The Week the Women Went</i>.
United States-made audio players installed at Beijing’s international airport to scare birds off the runway have failed because of the "language barrier", state media said on Thursday. The machines play sounds of predatory birds, such as hawks, to shoo away birds that pose a danger to aircraft. But the pests were apparently unruffled by the "foreign" squawks.
In a feat that put human sword swallowers to shame, a British dog managed to gulp down a stick only 5cm shorter than its own body, and escape unscathed, a report said on Thursday. Millie, a two-year-old Staffordshire bull terrier, swallowed the stick by accident while on a walk with her owner in fields behind his home.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blahBlah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
In his weekly online column for Israeli protest movement Gush Shalom, Middle East commentator Uri Avnery puts the United States’s push for regime change in Syria — through the stalking-horse of Lebanon — in the context of Graham Green’s novel <i>The Quiet American</i>. In his vanity and ideological crudeness, US President George W Bush is very much in the mould of Greene’s CIA agent, Alden Pyle.
Lemmer was under the impression that the Democratic Alliance’s Craig Morkel, son of the Cape Flats’s answer to Charles Bronson, had withdrawn from all political activity in late January after being linked to the travel voucher skandaal. He was therefore not a little surprised to find Bronsontjie on the party’s website this week, listed as DA parliamentary spokesperson on youth.
Japanese police have found the mummified body of a 107-year-old man, who died up to a decade ago, wearing a clean kimono at his house near Osaka, an official said on Wednesday. An official with the Itami city hall said the city is considering asking the man’s family to return gifts it has received since 1999 as a token of the man’s longevity.
Media, entertainment and leisure holding group Johnnic Holdings has named acting chief and financial director Christine Ramon its CEO with immediate effect, the group announced on Wednesday. Meanwhile, at the general meeting of shareholders held on Wednesday, Johnnic shareholders approved the unbundling of Johncom.