The South African Revenue Service (Sars) reported that in less than 24 hours since the electronic filing facility for individuals went live on the internet, more than 1 500 taxpayers logged onto their website to register as users or to submit their income tax returns.
A victim of its own success with tourism, Bulgaria is struggling to contain excessive construction that is destroying its Black Sea coast and beginning to turn visitors away. Along the beaches north of Varna, the country’s main Black Sea resort, hotels are springing up like mushrooms, directly on the sand.
The Zimbabwe government on Thursday said it will evict about 4 000 black farmers who illegally occupied commercial farms and conservancies in the southern Masvingo province. The latest announcement represents a major policy U-turn by the Harare authorities.
Thousands of dollars have been bid on an Internet auction site for the handbag used by former All Black captain Tana Umaga to strike team mate Chris Masoe and reduce him to tears. Last weekend’s incident at a Christchurch bar after Masoe hit another patron has quickly become folklore and late on Friday morning the bidding had reached NZ$4 500 ($2 840).
Iran came under the strongest pressure in three years to renounce its nuclear programmes on Thursday night when the five permanent United Nations Security Council members and Germany agreed to reward Tehran if it accepted terms for negotiations, but to move towards isolating the country and international sanctions if it did not.
South Africans pay more for gas than consumers in most parts of the world, and Capetonians are essentially subsidising Eskom’s inability to supply electricity in the region. And while Eskom’s ”Turn on to Gas” campaign in the Western Cape might provide a short-term solution to the winter energy crunch, in the longer run, consumers will fork out more for energy.
The advocate for Pakistani national Khalid Mahmood Rashid, Zehir Omar, has accused the Department of Home Affairs of fabricating a document from the Pakistani Ministry of the Interior to show that Rashid was deported to Pakistan. South African authorities arrested Rashid in October, and the Department of Home Affairs said he was deported to Pakistan the following month as an illegal immigrant.
National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi visited the Johannesburg home of slain businessman and fraudster Brett Kebble several times last year, mostly for social occasions, three sources with direct personal experience of the visits have told the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>.
A "hoax" e-mail campaign similar to the one that implicated top government officials in an alleged plot to smear African National Congress deputy president Jacob Zuma has surfaced in Namibia, strengthening suspicions that the e-mails are the work of an "outside force".
President Thabo Mbeki will reinforce the message of clean, morally unquestionable leadership, dispel concerns about a centralised Presidency and bank on his urban, middle-class support in countering damaging attacks on him in the presidential succession battle.