South African Airways (SAA) on Wednesday launched a project to fight baggage pilferage and theft at Johannesburg International airport. From July 1, all baggage on SAA flights will be wrapped in plastic by an automatic machine, SAA’s chief risk officer, Vishnu Naicker, said.
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South Africa’s transport sector is in crisis, African National Congress MP and chairperson of Parliament’s transport portfolio committee Jeremy Cronin said on Tuesday. ”We’ve got a very, very substantial crisis around transport mobility and accessibility,” he told journalists at a Cape Town Press Club meeting.
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Brazil striker Ronaldo became the all-time World Cup scoring leader with 15 career goals, helping the defending champions defeat Ghana 3-0 on Tuesday to capture a berth in the World Cup quarterfinals. Ronaldo scored the historic goal with a spectacular solo effort in the fifth minute.
More than 30 media commentators on Tuesday handed a petition to the SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation) protesting their alleged ”blacklisting” at the public broadcaster, the South African Litigation Centre said. The petition called for a ”clear refutation of any erosion of free speech at the public broadcaster”.
Hurricane Katrina fraudsters who billed the United States government for fictitious services and filed claims for phantom hotel guests, and even Dom Perignon champagne, have managed to cost taxpayers up to -billion, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
Eleven of 16 people arrested for Sunday’s Jeppestown siege were remanded until July 27 by the Roodepoort Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday. Sunday’s shootout in Johannesburg left 12 people dead, four of them police officers. On Tuesday at least 10 police officers with rifles and handguns blocked the doors to the court as the first nine men laboured up the steps from the holding cells.
A split in the alliance between the African National Congress, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions will ”seriously” damage South Africa at this point, the SACP’s deputy general secretary warned on Tuesday. ”I think fragmentation of the alliance … wouldn’t be good for South Africa,” Jeremy Cronin said.
The United Nations Environmental Programme warned on Tuesday that Africa will slip further into poverty if its governments fail to adopt eco-friendly policies to sustain and exploit its natural wealth. It said the continent’s fast-degrading environment faces fresh strains from genetically modified organisms, invasive species and a switch in chemical manufacturing.
About 450 detainees were released from Iraqi and United States-run prisons on Tuesday under a reconciliation plan aimed at bringing insurgents into the political process and ending the deadly tide of bloodshed in Iraq. But at least 21 people were killed a day after dozens died in a wave of violence, including 22 people blown up by a motorbike bomb.