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/ 13 November 2007
United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon on Monday hailed as a ”significant breakthrough” last week’s agreement by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda to deal with illegal armed groups in the eastern DRC. Ban urged both Kinshasa and Kigali to ”act urgently to implement all the agreed measures”.
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/ 13 November 2007
A kulula.com passenger aircraft turned back to Johannesburg soon after taking off for Cape Town on Monday because of low oil pressure in an engine, Comair said. A spokesperson said flight MN103, scheduled to depart just after noon, turned back to Johannesburg within 40 minutes after the captain received a ”technical alert”.
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/ 13 November 2007
Marvel is putting some of its older comics online on Tuesday, hoping to reintroduce young people to the X-Men and Fantastic Four by showcasing the original issues in which such characters appeared. It is a tentative move, but it represents perhaps the comics industry’s most aggressive web push yet.
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/ 13 November 2007
If the South African Reserve Bank is consistent, then inflation matters have deteriorated since October and another rate hike can be expected in December, according to Dr Azar Jammine, director and chief economist of Econometrix. However, Jammine on Monday also criticised some of the thinking in this regard.
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/ 13 November 2007
Research conducted by Virgin Money has highlighted a number of credit-card interest-rate "secrets" that South African banks would prefer their consumers not know about, resulting in a pretty dreadful deal for consumers when it comes to the interest rates they receive and are charged on their credit cards.
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/ 13 November 2007
A lawyer’s duty must reach beyond the letter of the law, says Professor Christof Heyns, dean of the faculty of law at the University of Pretoria. But he believes students are not prepared for this because the education system is teaching law without context. “Pursuing and protecting the rule of law is the business of lawyers," says Heyns.
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/ 13 November 2007
“It is not enough for large legal firms to quote the number of black lawyers in their firm when vying for contracts,” says Mohamed Husain of Knowles Husain Lindsay, who has been intimately involved in the drafting of the Legal Services Charter. “Many lawyers of colour have been and are still being marginalised and kept from corporate and commercial legal work. This is one of the problems the charter seeks to rectify.”
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/ 13 November 2007
“Change and transformation in our country is far-reaching and its effects should be long lasting. In the legal profession we have but started the process,” says legal firm Bowman Gilfillan’s CE, Leon Kruger. “Although the direction is being indicated by the department of justice and constitutional development through the draft Legal Services Charter, as a firm we have engaged in our own process to establish a transformation charter for ourselves."
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/ 13 November 2007
The Law Society of South Africa has placed transformation at the top of its agenda. Its close involvement with the Legal Services Charter process is evidence of this. The charter was launched under the auspices of the minister of justice in August last year and has since undergone extensive redrafting. The Law Society has noted that the third draft, released in mid-October, is simpler, more focused and reflects a social compact between the providers of legal services and the public.
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/ 13 November 2007
Without its immense motorway bridges spanning the lagoon, Lagos, the tentacular commercial capital of Nigeria, would be paralysed. Every day, well before dawn, tens of millions of vehicles set out to cross bridges that were the envy of the African continent back in the Seventies. Deprived of maintenance ever since, they are now showing signs of wear and tear.