A day of panic selling in the world’s financial markets on Tuesday knocked off the price of a barrel of oil, provided the sharpest one-day fall in gold for 13 years. Amid growing fears that rising global interest rates could bring a halt to the boom in asset prices of recent years, the toughest day for Japan’s Nikkei index since the 9/11 terrorist attacks was followed by extreme nervousness in European markets.
The unemployment rate in the United Kingdom hit its highest level in three and a half years in April, official data showed recently, while earnings growth remained subdued. The Office for National Statistics said unemployment for the three months leading up to April rose from 5,1% to 5,3%, its highest since September 2002.
Strong trade unions and employment-protection laws can go hand-in-hand with low levels of unemployment, the West’s leading think tank said last week in a keynote study that rejected the notion that there was a single blueprint for a successful labour market.
The cellphone rings. A message has just come in. Tendai Mukaro suspiciously glances around and chuckles as he reads the humorous message. Then in a minute he is punching on his phone, posting the just-received joke to family and friends. It is the order of the day in Harare and other cities around the country.
The death toll in Angola’s cholera epidemic has reached near the 1 900 mark, with the number of cases exceeding 46 000, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday. From February 13 to June 19 this year, ”a total of 46 758 cumulative cases and 1 893 deaths have been reported in 14 out of the 18 provinces” in Angola, a WHO statement said.
For a company that claims to have moved ”beyond petroleum”, BP has managed to spill an awful lot of it on to the tundra in Alaska. After the news was leaked to journalists, it recently admitted to investors that it is facing criminal charges for allowing more than one million litres of crude oil to seep across one of the world’s most sensitive habitats.
The SABC will always be a contested terrain subjected to external pressure from sections of the public. These may be political bodies, commercial interests, sports bodies, cultural groups, trade unions et cetera. It would be surprising if this were not so, writes CE of the SABC, Dali Mpofu.
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Ukraine outclassed Saudi Arabia in their crunch Group H game in Hamburg on Monday, firmly setting their stuttering World Cup campaign back on track with a convincing 4-0 win. The World Cup debutants showed their attacking intent against a toothless Saudi team from the start.
Two explosions struck an Interior Ministry patrol and a market in the Baghdad area on Monday evening, killing at least seven people and wounding 16, police said. The first attack was a car bomb that struck a patrol in western Baghdad, killing four commandos and wounding six, Captain Jamil Hussein said.