With food price hikes affecting all consumers and particularly the poor, it is crucial to understand the pricing when working out what measures can be taken — and where the Competition Commission fits in. High food prices must be seen in the context of the liberalisation of agricultural markets in the mid-1990s and the expectation that with competition there would be greater efficiency and, ultimately, lower prices for consumers.
Renaissance Medical Scheme was placed under curatorship last week after a report showed it is insolvent and more than R30million in the red. The industry regulatory authority, the Council for Medical Schemes, applied for the scheme to be put under curatorship to protect its 30Â 000 beneficiaries.
An Australian low-cost airline and a Canadian luxury resort and casino developer have launched two ambitious projects that aim to revolutionise Vietnam’s fast-growing tourism industry. Jetstar, the budget offshoot of Australian carrier Qantas, teamed up with Vietnam’s Pacific Airlines to launch Jetstar Pacific on Friday.
Sadly, it now looks obvious why everyone is calling for President Thabo Mbeki to step down. No one has presented a more compelling argument for the case than the man himself, limping from blunder to blunder somewhere off in the wings of our national life.
The arrest this week of Congolese rebel leader and former vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba on charges of crimes against humanity could be a significant blow for the leaders of myriad armed groups that terrorise the continent. Bemba was arrested on Sunday by Belgian authorities acting on an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Could the visuals have stoked the attacks?
An American journalism teacher visiting SA has been horrified at the broadcast and publication of xenophobic violence. It clashes with her home experience where audiences are sheltered by the media.
The Competition Commission on Wednesday laid perjury charges against the managing executive of Adcock Ingram Critical Care at the Sunnyside police station in Pretoria. The commission said it had laid charges against Arthur Barnett for allegedly ”committing the common law crime of perjury”. He allegedly ”knowingly” provided false information to the commission.
The death toll for the Eastern Cape bus crash stood at 22, including five children, police announced on Wednesday. The bus — which belongs to a private bus company — careened down a 200m embankment into a river near the town of Cedarville on Tuesday. During the course of the day, there were conflicting reports of how many people had been killed, ranging from 20 to 30.
JP Pietersen’s lack of form in the Super 14 season has cost him a place in the Springbok squad that was named in Somerset West on Wednesday. The Sharks’ World Cup-winning wing failed to score a try in the 2008 series after he finished the 2007 Super 14 season as the leading try scorer.
The United Nations’s top human rights official on Wednesday issued a strong condemnation of the killing of opposition political activists in Zimbabwe. ”It is hard to get a very precise picture of the full range of the violence, or the exact number of politically motivated extra-judicial killings,” said Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.