Transnet and the four unions representing its staff signed an agreement on Tuesday governing the transformation of the parastatal. The signing marked the end of a dispute which began last August and led to two days of national strikes in March that crippled the transport industry.
There is a dire need for South Africans to be educated on financial retirement issues, an Old Mutual survey released on Tuesday has found. Old Mutual’s 2006 Retirement Funds Survey says young professionals, active retirement-fund members and pensioners receive insufficient or no retirement planning education.
A man interviewed live on BBC television after being mistakenly identified as an IT expert spoke on Tuesday about the glitch, which happened when he went to the broadcaster for a job interview. Guy Goma was mistaken for IT expert Guy Kewney at the BBC’s west London offices last week and found himself in a BBC News 24 studio being quizzed on a legal battle.
A driver of a minibus taxi was killed in Cape Town on Tuesday morning, the city’s fourth taxi-related shooting this week, Western Cape police said. This incident followed three other shootings in Cape Town between Monday and Tuesday afternoon, which left four people wounded.
Police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades to disperse striking security guards who went on the rampage in central Cape Town and outside Parliament on Tuesday. Several injuries were reported and dozens of shop windows were broken, goods looted and cars trashed as about 5 000 strikers made their way to Parliament.
A magnitude-7,4 earthquake struck in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of the Kermadec Islands, at 10.39am GMT on Tuesday, the United States Geological Survey reported on its website. The quake — which hit at a depth of 148km — was located about 290km south, south-west of Raoul Island, in the Kermadec Islands chain.
Japanese automobile giant Toyota Motor Corporation said on Tuesday it would recall more than 210 000 Land Cruiser Prado sports utility vehicles worldwide, owing to a problem with their rear-axle shafts. The parts, which could develop cracks because of insufficient tenacity, would be replaced with fortified shafts, the top Japanese motor company said in a statement.
An unexploded World War II bomb brought travel chaos to the River Mersey on Tuesday, leaving almost 250 ferry passengers and crew stranded as navy divers rushed to disarm it, the coastguard said. Traffic was moving through the tunnel, said Craig Sim, watch assistant at Liverpool Coastguard in north-west England.
Fenner South Africa, a manufacturer and distributor of fire-resistant conveyor belting to the local coal-mining industry in which it commands a 75% to 80% market share, has become the first of its sector to conclude a black economic empowerment (BEE) partnership, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.
Sudan on Tuesday promised to remedy the shortage in food aid caused by the halving of the cash-strapped World Food Programme’s rations for displaced people in the strife-torn region of Darfur. ”The government of Sudan pledges to give 20 000 metric-tonnes of food aid to make up for the cuts in food rations,” Vice-President Ali Osman Taha told reporters.