Port Elizabeth, South Africa News

DESPITE deteriorating sight, Port Elizabeth's Gwen Nel is fully focused on achieving a fourth gold medal when the World Bowls Championship for blind and partially sighted bowlers takes place in Worthing, England, next month .

A PORT Elizabeth film producer who gave up a career in the banking industry to follow his passion is over the moon after his movie was chosen to open the Durban International Film Festival next month.

Building projects at the Coega Industrial Development Zone outside Port Elizabeth have injected over R1.2-billion into South Africa's Eastern Cape construction industry over the past two quarters, in the process creating over 2 500 jobs, the state-owned Coega Development Corporation said last week.

SOUTH Africa's biggest generic drugmaker, Aspen Pharmacare, has offered to buy GlaxoSmithKline's thrombosis drugs and their associated manufacturing site in a deal that Aspen says could generate turnover of 300- million a year.

ALTERNATIVE rock fans can look forward to an up close and personal experience with a South African band that has proven it knows how to connect with an audience.

It is difficult not to sometimes get despondent about the quarrels we still have around race.

ABOUT 1000 mourners attended a mass funeral in Port Elizabeth at the weekend for seven members of the same family - including two young children - who were killed in an accident along the R75 outside Uitenhage.

PORT Elizabeth TV personality Buli Ngomane, also known as Buli G, was guest speaker at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls Youth Day event in Gauteng yesterday.

MILLIONS of South Africans will no longer have to be satisfied with just waking up to the smooth voice of Umhlobo Wenene's Pastor the DJ - they will soon be able to dance along to his debut album, Worth The W8.

ONE of Port Elizabeth's most dangerous criminals - one of only a few supermax prisoners - is suing the Correctional Services Department for R4.4-million for the mental anguish he claims he suffered as a result of being locked up in solitary confinement for 10 days.

THE Newton Park Swimming Pool's filtration system will undergo a major overhaul next month to avoid another burst-pipe debacle such as the one which threw the South African National Aquatic Championships into disarray earlier this year.

IN Playpen, the Roger Ballen photographic retrospective, dark matter meets deep, brutal and uncomfortable honesty while seizing the content of childhood and locking it into the four gossamer walls of play.

LOCAL wine-lovers were treated this week to some of South Africa's very best wines, guided by wine fundi Michael Fridjhon, when the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show masterclass visited Port Elizabeth.

ROOTS AND ROUTES: Karretjie People of the Great Karoo. Reviewed by Guy Rogers DESPITE being the descendents of the earliest inhabitants of South Africa, the Karretjie People own no land and are increasingly divorced from it.

AHEAD of Father's Day on Sunday, Eastern Cape celebrities opened up about their love for their fathers, the best advice their dads have given them and how they plan to spend the day honouring the special man in their lives.

IN another leap towards realising the R1.7-billion Bay West super regional mall in Port Elizabeth, the South African National Roads Agency has called for tenders for the development of the long sought- after Redhouse-Chelsea interchange road network.

A black player is set to make his debut with the Springboks on Saturday after rising from a poor township in the home province of the former president and anti-apartheid icon.

WITH biscuit taffeta overlays and shimmering centrepieces of wire-beaded rhinos finished off with cactus, coupled with food fit for royalty, socialites descended on the fair grounds of Lake de la Vie.

TODAY could see a Port Elizabeth horse halt the domination of the Cape Town visitors in the Eastern Cape's big races.

NELSON Mandela Bay theatrical artists are set to receive training as part of an exchange programme with a US-based company.