After the shocking details Pension Funds Adjudicator Vuyani Ngalwana brought to light on the hefty sales commissions and administration fees pocketed by assurers, you would have thought South Africans had learnt to avoid middlemen and invest directly in the stock market by now. Yet there are only about 200 000 South Africans who buy shares.
No strategic equity partner is being contemplated for state-controlled South African Airways (SAA) "at this stage", Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin reports. "The airline industry is a difficult and highly competitive one. To meet these challenges the [public enterprises] department is continually attempting to improve its risk management in regard to SAA."
![]()
David Beckham hit back at his critics with a trademark freekick against Ecuador that took England into the World Cup quarterfinals, and he was revelling in his moment of glory. The England captain curled his shot past Cristian Mora in the 60th minute to hand his side a 1-0 win and a showdown with Portugal.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is to try to push poverty reduction back onto the group of eight (G8) agenda in a speech on Monday, warning it will take "hard work for years to come" to tackle extreme poverty in Africa. Blair was expected to restate his commitment to the aims set out last year at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.
This was the race Michael Schumacher was supposed to close the gap on Fernando Alonso in the chase for the Formula One championship. After all, Schumacher had won the Canadian Grand Prix seven times. Alonso never had anything but trouble at the Circuit Gilles Villeneueve.
East Timor’s Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, widely blamed for triggering last month’s bloody unrest, resigned on Monday in a move expected to ease tensions in the impoverished nation. The announcement sparked jubilation on the streets of the violence-hit capital Dili, where truckloads of protestors cruised the streets waving red, yellow and black East Timorese flags with horns blaring.
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=soccer_world_cup_2006"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/272488/icon_focuson_wc3.gif" align=left border=0></a>The official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) says it is to submit questions to all national departments of government in South Africa about which politicians and officials have gone to Germany during the World Cup at taxpayers’ expense. This follows a report that the KwaZulu-Natal transport department was sending a delegation to look at the German transport system.
The New Zealand doctor who turned his surgery into a brothel has had so little business he may have to go back to treating patients himself, a newspaper reported on Monday. The girls at Whalers — the only brothel in New Zealand’s Far North — have not exactly been flat out since Dr Neil Benson opened the doors last month.
Bearing a message from the Russian who invented the world’s most common assault rifle, activists will press governments at a United Nations conference on small arms to ensure such weapons are not used to trample human rights. The groups and some officials at the conference advocate a fundamentally new approach for trade in the light arms that are said to kill 1 000 people a day.
![]()
British and German police were aided by heavy rain that had most fans running for cover after a weekend that saw hundreds of arrests. Fears that the fan violence that gripped Stuttgart on Saturday would be repeated on Sunday were erased by England’s 1-0 win against Ecuador and the driving rain.