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/ 19 August 2006

Taxman peeks inside Oscars’ goodie bags

Those who hold a rose-tinted view of the entertainment industry may wish to look away now. It turns out that the expensive gifts showered on the film stars who present the Oscars are not given purely out of a spirit of generosity. The United States’s tax authorities are cracking down on the ”goodie bags” handed out to presenters.

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/ 19 August 2006

Great urgency for agreement on legal charter

There is no final agreement yet on a Legal Services Charter but finalising it is urgent, the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development said on Friday. While there is broad agreement on the need for transformation of ownership of traditionally white firms, there is no agreement on black economic empowerment quotas.

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/ 19 August 2006

SA govt under fire at Aids conference

South Africa will ”never achieve redemption” for its HIV/Aids policies, the United Nations special envoy to Africa told the closing session of the International Aids Conference in Toronto on Friday. Stephen Lewis accused the government of expounding HIV/Aids theories ”more worthy of a lunatic fringe”.

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/ 19 August 2006

Zim, Angola fail to sign SADC protocol

Zimbabwe and Angola have failed to sign a Southern African Development Community (SADC) protocol aligning its finance and investment policies with its objectives. ”Some countries first need the approval of their Parliament,” SADC chairperson and Lesotho Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili said on Friday.

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/ 18 August 2006

The workers’ X

Workers interviewed by the Mail & Guardian this week generally supported the idea that the South African Communist Party should field its own candidates in elections, while expressing growing impatience with the ruling African National Congress. The M&G survey followed an SACP central committee meeting at the weekend, where party leaders discussed the option of going it alone in elections.

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/ 18 August 2006

The pivotal ‘samoosa’

The ”samoosa file” is set to return to haunt the South African government when the case of missing Pakistani national Khalid Rashid returns to court in eight days’ time. The file belonging to the Home Affairs Department’s attorney, Vas Soni, mysteriously found its way into a food hamper belonging to a friend of Rashid’s flamboyant lawyer, Zehir Omar, at an earlier court hearing.

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/ 18 August 2006

Abortion law sent back

The Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act, which extended the range of health practitioners able to conduct abortions, was declared invalid by the Constitutional Court on Thursday on the grounds that Parliament had not sufficiently involved the public in drafting the Bill.