South African Passports

 

Passport production security tightened

Government has tightened up security around the production of South African passports, government spokesman Themba Maseko said.

Briefing journalists at Parliament in Cape Town following Cabinet's fortnightly meeting, he described the British government's recent decision to impose visa requirements on South Africans visiting the UK as "unfortunate".

South Africa had been working closely with British authorities on the security problems before the visa requirement was announced.

"They had sent a number of their teams to come and look at our processes and systems, and also to recommend additional measures that needed to be put in place.

"Unfortunately, the time frames given to address many of the challenges that were identified were just not sufficient.

"They had wanted these measures to be put in place by December, [but] a lot of the stuff that was put in place needed to be implemented in a time frame that goes beyond December.

"So we consider this decision to be unfortunate, but, again, it's a sovereign decision by a sovereign state, and we respect it."

Maseko said government's focus at the moment was "to make sure we do everything that is necessary to improve the security measures around the production of our passports".

Responding to a question on whether Britain would reconsider the visa requirement, he indicated this might be possible.

"We are convinced that the turn-a-round strategy [at Home Affairs], when it is fully implemented, all of these problems identified will have been addressed.

"We are in regular contact with the British government, and they have made it very clear that if and when those challenges are addressed, they may be able to review their position in this regard.

"I am not aware of any specific time frames, but we are in regular contact with the British government at... ministerial level to make sure we address their concerns," he said.

Sapa

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Predicting the Financial Crisis

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Better a fox than a hedgehog

Now who should we listen to?

CAN we blame the “experts” for not predicting the financial crisis? I don’t know of any scientific method that could have perfectly called and timed it. Some things were very troubling—global imbalances and the housing bubble—but did it have to get this bad? There were probably a myriad of ways it might have played out, some even worse, some better (remember the IMF hoping for a happy and gradual unwinding). How can you predict a tepid, inconsistent government reaction (economists suffered a touch of hubris there) and market panic? Human behaviour is tough to predict and when humans try to anticipate what other humans will do—you can get a big mess. Philip Tetlock, a professor of organisational behaviour at the…..

Read full article here....

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Medpedia’s Health Platform

 

Medpedia’s Health Platform Could Be Just What The Doctor Ordered

Medpedia Project, an initiative we wrote about during its private beta launch, has unveiled a public version of its trustworthy, fully transparent technology platform for the worldwide health community. Combining social networking with Web 2.0 health information, Medpedia’s website offers consumers a Wikipedia for health information, a LinkedIn network for health professionals, and a Facebook-like platform where consumers and experts can have a medical dialogue about treatment and conditions.

Medpedia has developed partnerships with Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, Berkeley School of Public Health, University of Michigan Medical School and other health organizations to help bring content and medical networks to the site. Many of the health institutions are offering the content free of copyright restrictions. Already, 25 medical and government institutions in both the U.S. and the U.K. have signed on to Medpedia to use its professional network.

Read the full article here....

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Allow the Banks to Fail

Is America pouring good money after bad with the bailout programs? This very savvy investor thinks so and gives his reasons.

Not only does he think that the American banks that are in trouble should be allowed to fail but that the IMF and the World Bank too have out lasted their usefulness.

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SAA – Flying High

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Here we have the national carrier, SAA, apparently  chosen by drug cartels to airfreight their product (coyly termed “contraband” by the SAA spokesperson) while we the tax payer, continue to support them through Government handouts.

For the second time in as many months SAA crew are detained at Heathrow when hard drugs are found in their luggage and the best the SAA spokesperson can come up with is boilerplate PR spin  “SAA remains committed to a zero tolerance approach towards the use of the airline’s services for any criminal activity and will continue to closely monitor the situation going forward” Yes, well so far a sterling job has been done by all involved.

Where are the heavy hitters from both SAA and Government who should be involved and taking this national embarrassment seriously enough to issue their own statements.

And now a task team is to be formed to add another layer of bureaucracy – if it were not so sad it would be laughable.

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When in Doubt…. Print Money

There are a couple of interesting things going on here

… apart from the somewhat wacky video.

This is a guy broadcasting from home with his own equipment and being viewed all over the world. He is not a presenter for some major network and he is not working for some giant media company. He is a guy who is interested in what he is doing and having a great time doing it.

So it is now possible to get your message out, worldwide, from your home office. You can say pretty much whatever you like without being constrained by some corporate guideline or political slant. You don’t have to worry about distribution, YouTube will take care of that for you.

So…. we are going to see many more refreshingly new commentators with new ideas and new styles… we might even learn something new.

Oh… and yes… governments will print more money and we will all suffer the consequences.

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A chance to crack down on Africa's loot-seeking elites

Paul Collier

The Guardian,

In an ideal world the criminals would run fish-and-chip shops, where they could do no harm, and the honest would run the banks. But the market will allocate people in precisely the opposite way: the criminals will move heaven and earth to get into the banks, while the honest will not mind much which job they take. That is why vigilant public scrutiny is essential to prevent looting.

Read the article......

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Twitter and Twine

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Twitter Changes Everything. The World Just Got Faster.

“Twitter changes everything. My world, and in fact The World, have just changed because of it. And I'm not sure any of us are prepared for what this is going to mean for our lives. For how we communicate. For how we do business. The world just got faster. But most people haven't realized this yet. They soon will.” - Nova Spivack

 

If you are not using Twitter yet I suggest that you take a look at it… it will become as universally used as email.

 

Twine is an altogether different tool, a place to bring information about your interests together

 

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The Billion Dollar Bailout

Can you comprehend these numbers? They’re just too big for me to get my mind around.

"My favorite way to think of it is in terms of seconds," says David Schwartz, a children's book author whose How Much Is a Million? tries to wrap young minds around the concept. "One million seconds comes out to be about 11½ days. A billion seconds is 32 years. And a trillion seconds is 32,000 years. I like to say that I have a pretty good idea what I'll be doing a million seconds from now, no idea what I'll be doing a billion seconds from now, and an excellent idea of what I'll be doing a trillion seconds from now."

And I keep asking the question “Where does all this money come from?” There is a price to pay at the end of the day and what worries me is that its not only Americans who are going to be paying….. so are you and I.

This is one financial crisis that is going to be remembered by your kids and their kids, kids.

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Xoopit

 

Xoopit Marries Facebook Status Updates With Gmail

Xoopit , a social networking email enhancement that allows users to locate files, images and videos in their inbox, has launched a new feature that lets Gmail users immediately see and set Facebook status messages and view profile photos of their Facebook friends while reading emails off a Gmail account.

Users can also quickly see other information such as birthdays and mobile phone numbers. After downloading the feature, a user can easily update their own status directly from a Gmail account using Facebook Connect. Xoopit’s new feature is pretty neat and gives users the ability to bounce between Facebook and Gmail accounts seamlessly. And Facebook’s status message feature is one that most users check most frequently, so its particularly useful to the average Facebook user.

Read more here ........

 

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Topics: facebook, status message, album, email, new zealand
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