Private equity firm Cerberus will buy the majority of DaimlerChrysler’s struggling Chrysler Group for ,4-billion, a fraction of the -billion deal that created the transatlantic car union nine years ago. Cerberus Capital Management gets an 80,1% stake in Chrysler and its related financial services business, DaimlerChrysler said on Monday.
Public service unions did not understand government’s wage increase offer and could therefore not negotiate seriously about it, Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said on Monday. Speaking at a press conference in Pretoria, she said the government wanted workshops to explain its offer.
Police in southern China have detained a woman after she admitted killing her four-year-old daughter because the child could not count, according to news reports. Investigators talked the woman, identified only by her surname Du, into confessing and took her into custody last Saturday, four days after her daughter was killed.
The heads of education committee moved on Monday to quash ”misleading reports” on the draft Education Laws Amendment Bill, gazetted for comment by Education Minister Naledi Pandor last week. Meanwhile, Pandor paid her first surprise visit to a Western Cape school in the Khayelitsha area on Monday.
Filipinos braced themselves for allegations of fraud and more violence on Monday as a lengthy vote count followed congressional and local elections marred by ambushes and shoot-outs. At least six people were killed during polling, which was expected to maintain the political status quo.
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted there was no reason to speak of a new Cold War with Russia as she arrived in Moscow on Monday for talks aimed at halting a dramatic slide in relations. Parallels drawn by some Russian officials with the era of the East-West Cold War were misplaced, Rice said as she prepared for meetings.
State doctors on Monday came out in support of wage negotiations that have deadlocked ahead of an ”unavoidable” national public strike, the South African Medical Association (Sama) said. ”We fully support the public service’s 12% wage-increase demands,” said Professor Mac Lukhele, chairperson of the Sama committee for public-sector doctors.
Families of the seven South Africans killed in a plane crash in Cameroon last week will be compensated, Kenya Airways said on Monday. It was obliged to compensate them under the Warsaw Convention, said the airline’s Southern African marketing manager Glenn Lewington, dismissing reports that this would not be the case.
Deputies and experts attending the Pan African Parliament on Monday called for Western countries to help reverse the environmental damage to the continent that they had helped create. "This problem is generated by countries in the West," said the African Union Commission’s rural development and agriculture commission director Babagana Ahmadu.
Corrie Sanders’s mission to regain a slice of the world heavyweight boxing title has suffered a major blow after he hurt his hand during his bout against Brazilian Daniel Bispo at Emperors Palace outside Johannesburg at the weekend. Sanders hurt his left hand in the first round, forcing him to fight virtually with one hand for the full 10 rounds.