Nigerian troops repelled an attack on a construction site run by Korean firm Daewoo in the Niger Delta in the early hours of Tuesday, killing some of the attackers. The attack took place at Mbiama, on the outskirts of the delta’s main city of Port Harcourt, where Daewoo are doing contract work for Italian oil firm Agip.
Pakistani forces stormed a mosque compound in the capital on Tuesday, killing at least 40 militants who were believed to be holed up with hundreds of women and children. With more than two-thirds of the complex cleared, commandos had yet to encounter any of the women and children.
A meeting to resolve a dispute about moving ambulance services and clinics in Gauteng from municipal to provincial administration ”achieved nothing” on Monday, a trade union said. The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu), which opposes the move, met provincial health minister Brian Hlongwa in Johannesburg.
At the time of writing, I am a mere week and a half from joining my partner in marriage. Elopement is looking decidedly attractive. When we first started planning, nine months ago, we decided we wanted something small, intimate and, preferably, cheap. This is more or less what we are getting, but it is certainly not going to be the budget affair we thought it would be, writes Jocelyn Newmarch.
Specialists have compiled a survey of the medical schemes they would recommend. The results: Camaf, Fedhealth, Liberty and Profmed. They judged these according to the level of interference with the doctor-patient relationship, balanced billing, efficiency with accounting and pre-authorisation, co-payments, rate fixing, reversals and formularies.
As a result of interest rate hikes in the past year, a homeowner with a bond of R500 000 is paying an extra R1 000 a month to his or her bank. Where does that extra mortgage payment go each month? Who benefits from the billions of extra rands that are paid by homeowners? The short answer is: the savers.
I will be resigning from the public service at the end of June 2007. Please advise me on what I should do with my pension. Should I open a retirement annuity, according to this week’s article? The article also spoke of the split, which is transferring half of the money into the annuity and cashing the rest, writes reader Phuti.
With the local equity market having had a spectacular run, fund managers believe that the developed offshore markets are offering better value for South African investors. But investing offshore does not mean that you have to go through the whole hassle of getting permission from the Reserve Bank to use your R2-million foreign investment allowance.
Small businesses find themselves in a catch-22 when it comes to BEE verification. Officially, they are exempt from the heavy red tape and costs involved in scoring a business’s BEE compliance. But, increasingly, they find that they have to submit to red tape and costs just to prove that they are indeed exempt.
Contamination of the Aids drug Viracept created panic among HIV-positive Zambians on antiretroviral therapy. Roche, the Swiss manufacturers, announced that some batches of Viracept had been accidentally contaminated with mesylate, prompting a recall of the product.