The former Enron bosses Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were on Thursday convicted on fraud charges stemming from one of the most infamous scandals in corporate history. Jurors in the trial returned their verdict after just five days and two hours of deliberations, despite dozens of charges and often complex financial detail during the trial.
Tine van der Maas, the Aids ”healer” accused of indirectly causing last week’s Aids-related death of Nozipho Bhengu, also provided nutritional support and treatment to Yfm DJ Fana Khaba, known as Khabzela. Khabzela stopped taking anti-retrovirals and died as a result of Aids at the age of 35 in January 2004.
National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi is linked to shadowy figures who were associated with slain businessman Brett Kebble. A <i>Mail & Guardian</i> investigation has revealed a web of relationships connecting Selebi to Clinton Nassif and Glenn Agliotti, who worked with Kebble on a series of "security" and other projects.
Two striking security guards have been arrested for setting fire to a warehouse at a Mondi paper mill, causing millions of rands in damage — this against a backdrop of intensifying industrial action and solidarity strikes. Business Unity South Africa has urged the warring parties to break the two-month-long strike deadlock.
The arrest last week of South African and other security operatives in Kinshasa has less to do with an attempted coup — as Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) officials allege — than the operatives’ remote link to veteran opposition figure Etienne Tshisekedi, say Western diplomats in the Congolese capital.
One of the most important influences on the financial markets is the herd instinct. This applies to professional traders and economic analysts as much as to the general public. Often they dare not be caught out if everyone else seems to be buying or selling, so they join the rush.
Breakfast with Amy Pascal is just how a meeting with a Hollywood studio boss should be. In just over an hour, the co-head of Sony Pictures Entertainment was hugged by a movie star (Paul Bettany), a bestselling author (Dan Brown) and a scion of the Kennedy clan (Bobby Shriver). And when she talks of ”Steven”, she is, of course, referring to Spielberg.
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Divisions in the African National Congress are being galvanised by a crisis of self-definition and have created a vacuum in the party — a vacuum that the South African Communist Party has moved to fill by suggesting that unless the SACP decisively intervenes, the needs of the poor will never be met.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has launched a stinging attack on President Thabo Mbeki that appears to reiterate what was contained in the hard-hitting South African Communist Party discussion document released last week. On Thursday Cosatu said it was primarily concerned that the ANC leadership was "drifting towards dictatorship".