Côte d’Ivoire’s rebels blamed the country’s president Laurent Gbagbo on Monday for what they described as an attempted assassination of their leader and an attack on their positions in a key northern city. Automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenade launchers resounded in the city of Korhogo on Sunday evening, in what officials said was a conflict between different rebel factions.
A South African fishing company is to farm perlemoen (abalone) in the fjords of southern Chile in a joint venture with a technology-based company from the South American country. I&J announced on Sunday that the species to be farmed — red abalone — was different to that of the South African variety, with a different colour and a different taste.
Benevolence was behind the actions that led to former African National Congress Women’s League president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s fraud and theft conviction, the Pretoria High Court heard on Monday. She had not been motivated by personal gain, but had sought to address a pressing social need, Advocate Ishmael Semenya argued in Madikizela-Mandela’s criminal appeal.
Israeli military and intelligence operatives are active in Kurdish areas of Iran, Syria and Iraq, providing training for commando units and running covert operations that could further destabilise the entire region, according to a report in the New Yorker magazine.
The JSE Securities Exchange South Africa was softer at midday on Monday, with a strong rand keeping the bourse in check. However, with no fresh news to encourage players, volumes were extremely light — less than half a billion rand worth of shares had changed hands.
The Merrill Lynch survey of South African fund managers in June saw fund managers forecasting a stronger rand in 12 months time than they did in the May survey. The 12-month consensus forecast on the rand is now R7,10 to the dollar compared with R7,64 in the May survey, while the range was from R6,20 to R7,50 compared with May’s range of R7,30 to R8.
The surprise cloudburst that marked the winter solstice saw motorists around Gauteng skidding into each other with at least 10 accidents reported around Johannesburg on Monday. ”Motorists should increase their following distance and reduce speed,” said Johannesburg Metro police spokesperson Inspector Wayne Minnaar.
The stars have come out, just as they always did. There’s Uma Thurman, hair beacon-blonde. Glenn Close gives a little wave, taking up her place just a few seats away. Spike Lee is here somewhere. Officially, they’ve all come to the Skirball Centre in New York’s SoHo district for a movie premiere.
Standard Bank has launched a new style investment product, known as a discount share instalment, that is designed to provide investors with a simple, low-cost alternative to buying shares directly in the market. The product is designed to mimic the movement of a range of leading South African shares without having to pay the full purchase price upfront.
South Africa needs to improve communications to dispel misconceptions among potential foreign investors about government’s black economic empowerment (BEE) programme, President Thabo Mbeki said on Sunday. Briefing the media after the seventh presidential International Investment Council meeting in Cape Town, he said there was an imbalance between the perceptions and the reality of South Africa among some abroad.