THE main Christian association in northern Nigeria’s largest city, Kano, protested on Thursday to President Olusegun Obasanjo over the recent destruction of 17 churches saying Christians would defend their faith to “the last drop of blood”. In an open letter to Obasanjo, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) said that the churches were demolished in […]
EGYPTIAN investigators privately agreed with an earlier US report blaming the October 1999 crash of an EgyptAir plane in which 217 people died on suicide, according to Newsweek on Sunday. EgyptAir’s managing director Mohamed Fahim Rayyan has rejected the theory of a suicide by the plane’s co-pilot, Gamil al-Battuti. The National Transportation Safety Board is […]
SOUTH African banking and financial services group BoE Ltd said on Thursday it planned to acquire Cashbank Ltd for R356-million cash. BoE said it was buying the unlisted company, specializing in housing finance, for its expertise in providing pension and provident-fund secured home loans on low-cost housing, as part of its drive into the emerging […]
AT least 10 people have been killed and thousands have fled their homes in central Nigeria after ethnic clashes following the grisly beheading of a traditional ruler last week, officials said Thursday. The clashes — between people from the ethnic Tiv minority and the majority Hausa-speaking Azeri community — have swept through towns and villages […]
CHRIS MCGREAL, Johannesburg | Friday HENRIETTA Mqokomiso knew what was coming. Alexandra township council served the demolition order a week ago and branded her house with three yellow crosses. On Monday, while the domestic worker was working, an official banged on the door and told her children that a crew would be around the next […]
Thebe Mabanga in your ear Radio has a long way to go before it can lead the South African media in news coverage and analysis. Although newspapers rely somewhat on radio to give publicity to stories covered on a specific day, radio still depends on print media to amplify a story it might have broken. […]
Chris Lavers Aeons by Martin Gorst (Fourth Estate) Atom: An Odyssey from the Big Bang to Life on Earth … AND BEYOND by Lawrence M Krauss (Little, Brown) Popular-science books on any particular theme tend to arrive in bunches. Perhaps prompted by the earlier success of Richard Fortey’s Life: An Unauthorised Biography, bookstores are now […]
Bruce Whitfield Greg Morris, the former Specialised Outsourcing MD, fingered in the highly critical Umgeni Water report, has added his voice to the growing list of concerns around the document’s credibility. Contrary to his boss Dave King’s largely positive response to the document, Morris has criticised elements of the report. He says he was implicated […]
Construction of the new smelter will commence immediately and commissioning is scheduled for late 2003 Stewart Bailey BHP Billiton on Thursday announced its first major project as a merged entity giving the go-ahead for the construction of its $1-billion Mozal II project, aimed at doubling its aluminium smelting capacity in Mozambique to 500 000 tons […]
Former South African president Nelson Mandela is to share a stage with Mick Jagger, U2 and a bevy of models in a charity concert in Barcelona.
French broadcaster Jrme Clment explains why he objects to the concept of reality TV ‘Loft Story plays on viewers’ emotions in the most perverse way,” says Jrme Clment, head of the television channel Arte France. “It’s a lie from start to finish. It claims to show us a slice of real life, but in fact […]
Michael Vlismas in Tulsa golf On a steamy Monday evening in the week of the 101st United States Open, a man with a strange accent booked into the Doubletree hotel in Tulsa. “It’s like Goose with an N,” he explained to the check-in clerk, who had never heard of him, nor had any interest in […]
THE Nigerian police have handed over more than 80 Black Maria vans to the prison service in an effort to end delays in the trial system, police said on Wednesday. For years, the judiciary has complained of the failure of the police to bring trial suspects to court for hearings. The prison service says it […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION This was Idi Amin with bells and whistles. Debora Patta’s Third Degree interview with Lieutenant General Andrew Masondo must go down both as a classic and a benchmark. This was hardball television interviewing the way it should be: uncompromising, to the point, gratifyingly obdurate. In about 15 bizarre and often hilarious minutes […]
Nigel Wilis The Madness of Adam and Eve: How Schizophrenia Shaped Humanity by David Horrobin (Bantam) David Horrobin’s central thesis is that the very genes which in combination predispose their holder to schzophrenia are responsible for the creativity of humankind. I must admit to a certain bias: the author is a friend of mine and […]
POLICE in northern Tanzania were holding 17 people on Wednesday and had seized nine tonnes of marijuana, state-owned radio Tanzania reported on Wednesday. Quoting regional police commander Paul Ntobi in Mara, the radio said that the suspects were arrested in four villages, following a swoop launched after a tip-off by local citizens. Ntobi said some […]
Lauren Shantall food Our tummies are global gourmets, burbling loudly in favour of a worldly identity. We don’t realise how much the myth of a national character is corroded by our own digestive enzymes, or how the notion of “Rainbow cuisine” colours our palates in far more languages than a mere 11. For in any […]
SUDANESE Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail tried to reassure Canada’s Talisman oil company on Thursday, saying his government appreciates its efforts in oil operations and services to people around the oilfields, in remarks to the press. He said the government had not received official word from Talisman that it was planning to sell its shares in […]
Paul van Eeden in San Diego There can be no doubt that the United States faces a serious deflationary threat. More than $4-trillion has been lost in the stock market and, regardless of how you spin the numbers, that money is gone. Even though Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan has been inflating the money supply […]
TWENTY years after his violent death at the hands of Islamic extremists for making peace with Israel, former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s life is being revived on cinema screens across the country. “The Days of Sadat,” which follows his evolution from revolutionary to president of the republic, opens this week to Egyptian audiences who five […]
Reality TV is controversial, lucrative and very popular. Sylvie Kerviel examines a cultural phenomenon In 1999 the Dutch “reality television” show Big Brother, in which a group of contestants was isolated from the rest of the world and kept under 24-hour surveillance, was an instant hit. It was so successful that it immediately spawned similar […]
Cape Town | Friday SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday a government minister will meet with the main shareholder in South African Airways to settle a row, which analysts see as a threat to the country’s privatization programme. Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe will meet on Saturday with the board of Transnet, […]
Harry Viljoen finally admits Montgomery is a flop as the Boks’ on-field general Andy Capostagno It would be easier to believe Springbok coach Harry Viljoen’s assertion that he is building for the 2003 World Cup if he had not made five changes to the starting line-up for the second Test against France in Durban on […]
BELINDA BERESFORD, Johannesburg | Friday THE cost of curbing the worldwide HIV/Aids epidemic in lower-income countries will soar almost fivefold by 2005, reaching an estimated $9,2-billion, compared to current expenditure on the disease of about $1,8-billion. This compares with the estimated $20-billion a year that the United States alone spends on Aids domestically. This forecast […]
This one-time glamour stock has fallen from R22 to R1. But is it a fundamentally sound business and is it offering value at these levels? Belinda Anderson Nicolaas Vlok, the CEO of Idion, has successfully managed to turn what was once a family business into a global software group. The catalyst was the purchase of […]
NEXT month’s Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit in the Zambian capital of Lusaka will focus on the continent’s economic challenges, a Zambian official said Wednesday. “This summit will not strive to settle wars of liberation” but would herald a “new era where economic problems will be taken up,” Sikota Wina, an emissary of Zambian […]
Joel Avni ROCKS OF AGES: SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN THE FULLNESS OF LIFE by Stephen Jay Gould (Jonathan Cape) THE PLEASURE OF FINDING THINGS OUT by Richard PFeynman (Penguin) Religion and science seem to have dominated intellectual discourse for centuries. Ironic, isn’t it, that two of humanity’s main intellectual systems come up with such contradictory […]
NIGERIAN nurses on Wednesday threatened to go on strike next week to protest what they called government preferential treatment of doctors. Their representative, Nwogu Nwogu, said that the government has for too long paid attention to doctors at the expense of other health workers, and nurses will go on strike from Monday to protest this […]
Mboniso Sigonyela The Reserve Bank’s interest-rate surprise will provide a further fillip to buoyant house prices especially in Gauteng. This is good news for owners as houses are in most cases an individual’s biggest asset. But property economist Erwin Rode warns buyers to be careful of an interest-rate trap. “Most people will rush into the […]
ANTONY BARNETT and STEFAANS BRMMER, Johannesburg | Friday FOR thousands of years, members of Southern Africa’s Kung tribe have eaten the Hoodia cactus to stave off hunger and thirst on long hunting trips. The Kung people – a subdivision of the San – used to cut off a stem of the cactus about the size […]
Deon Potgieter boxing As the only boxing world champion in South Africa holding one of the “big three” sanctioning bodies’ world titles, Lehlohonolo “Hands of Stone” Ledwaba carries a lot of responsibility on his shoulders this weekend. He makes the sixth defence of his International Boxing Federation junior-featherweight title as the main supporting bout to […]
FORTY police and thirty demonstrators were slightly hurt on Wednesday night in clashes during a protest by young members of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority outside the Coptic cathedral in Cairo, police said. Coptic youth have been protesting since Sunday over the newspaper publication of a graphic story about a defrocked monk’s alleged sexual affairs in […]