South Africa’s February 2005 producer price index (PPI) is expected to remain at January’s 5,5% year-on-year (y/y) increase. According to an I-Net Bridge survey of economists, the range is from 4,9% y/y to 5,9% y/y. The optimists expect the stronger rand to have kept factory gate prices subdued, while the pessimists believe rising oil and other commodity prices will lead to higher producer prices.
The protesters outside court vouching for embattled Jacob Zuma were largely female. Women with his photo emblazoned across their chests. Women honking vuvuzelas in his support. Selling T-shirts to raise funds for his defence. Burning images of the woman who dared lay a rape charge against him.
Government is to double the salaries of councillors and mayors across the country as part of its plan to enhance performance and improve the functioning of local government. Where small revenue streams might mean that some rural municipalities might struggle to pay the salaries, the Department of Provincial and Local Government has allocated R600-million to assist.
Tax evasion charges against Roger Kebble — father and business partner of slain mining magnate Brett Kebble — appear to be part of broader moves to shut down the remnants of the Kebble empire. Market rumours suggested Kebble Snr had been attempting to raise finance to make a bid to re-take JCI, the main vehicle for his son’s financial finagling.
Cars were torched and shops burnt in central Paris on Thursday night after the seventh big protest in eight days against the government’s controversial employment law ended in clashes between hooded youths and riot police. The youths grouped on the pavements on the Esplanade des Invalides and armed themselves with baseball bats and metal bars.
A £500 000 prize that is considered the ”Nobel” for mathematics has gone to an 80-year-old Swedish academic whose work on the complexities of soundwaves has subsequently been used in the electronic components of iPods. Lennart Carleson seemed slightly bewildered at the news he had won the Abel prize, named after a brilliant Norwegian mathematician who died young.
A 24-year-old woman who was missing for 10 years has been reunited with her father after spending most of the time locked in the bedroom of a house just three kilometres away. Tanya Kach had been living at the house in a suburb of Pittsburgh with a 48-year-old man who was a security guard at the school she attended as a teenager.
Rescue workers were still battling on Thursday to find the eight miners believed to be trapped in a fire that broke out in the number 7 shaft at Buffelsfontein mine near Stilfontein late the previous night. And the fire has prompted a complaint from the National Union of Mineworkers that underground blazes are becoming a serious problem in mining.
As Germany mounts the first prosecution targeting an international nuclear contraband ring, details are emerging of how South Africa was a key base for supplying pariah states. Authorities as far afield as Malaysia, Switzerland, Germany, Pakistan and South Africa were jolted into action after October 2003 when a cargo ship, the <i>BBC China</i>, was searched at an Italian port in a United States-British intelligence operation.
Auditor General Shauket Fakie has hit back at criticism by Parliament that his report on the declaration of interests by ministers, deputy ministers and government employees was based solely on outdated company information. The report revealed that 14 ministers and deputy ministers, and 1Â 678 provincial ministers and senior public service managers had not fully disclosed their financial interests in the 2003/04 financial year.