No image available
/ 31 January 2007
South Africa’s trade balance swung into surplus in December from a R10,5-billion deficit the previous month, official data showed on Wednesday. The surplus was far better than a Reuters survey forecast of a R2-billion deficit in December, although the data is volatile and unpredictable and December is traditionally a low import month.
No image available
/ 31 January 2007
Supporters of African National Congress deputy president Jacob Zuma have hit back at the South African Communist Party’s Jeremy Cronin for saying they are unprincipled and inconsistent. ”Cronin is one of the people who have consciously continued to lie about Zuma and his supporters since the [Zuma’s] rape trial,” the Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust said on Wednesday.
No image available
/ 31 January 2007
Youths participating in budget discussions have influenced state decisions in Brazil and free uniforms have upped school attendance in Kenya, reducing teenage child bearing, according to a World Bank report. The future could look brighter for the world’s youth with the implementation of such interventions, which are highlighted in the World Bank’s first report of the year.
No image available
/ 31 January 2007
Syria is hoping that South Africa can help it with key problems in the Middle East, its Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Faisal Mikdad, said on Wednesday. Mikdad has been sent to South Africa as a special envoy of Syrian President Bashar al-Asad to deliver a letter to President Thabo Mbeki highlighting problems in the Middle East.
No image available
/ 31 January 2007
Crime affects more than eight out of ten businesses in South Africa, a survey has found. Eighty-four percent of medium-to-large privately held businesses in South Africa report that they, their staff or families of staff have been affected by personal contact crime over the past 12 months, according to Grant Thornton’s 2007 International Business Report.
No image available
/ 31 January 2007
Retief Goosen has won the European Tour’s golfer-of-the-month award for January after a spectacular birdie-eagle finish clinched victory at the Qatar Masters. The South African took the honour ahead of Jo’burg Open winner Ariel Canete of Argentina, the tour said in a news release on Wednesday.
No image available
/ 31 January 2007
Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono on Wednesday unveiled a battery of belt-tightening measures including slashing money supply to put the brakes on four-digit inflation. Gono however did not devalue the local currency, saying it was no panacea.
No image available
/ 31 January 2007
The Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is mounting a direct challenge to United States’s President George Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq. The senator from Illinois on Tuesday introduced a Bill that would see US combat troops withdrawn from Iraq by spring 2008.
No image available
/ 31 January 2007
Sidney Sheldon, an Oscar-winning Hollywood screenwriter who went on to become one of the world’s most prolific novelists, died in California on January 30 at the age of 89, a publicist said. Sheldon died of complications from pneumonia at the Eisenhower Medical Centre in Rancho Mirage, near his Palm Springs home.
No image available
/ 31 January 2007
A Sea Launch rocket carrying a commercial communications satellite blew up during its launch from an oceangoing platform in the equatorial Pacific on Tuesday. The Boeing-built NSS-8 satellite was intended for the Netherlands-based SES New Skies.