London-listed South African life assurance group Old Mutual said on Monday that the adoption of European Embedded Value (EEV) increased its embedded value by 0,5% at the end of December 2004. The EEV principles require best-estimate assumptions, consistency between assumptions and active review.
The JSE Securities Exchange was higher at midday on Monday, with bullion’s break above the $440 an ounce level, lending a shine to gold stocks. Broadly positive sentiment was underpinning the local bourse, dealers said. By 12.01pm, the gold mining index gained 1,1%. The all share and all share industrial indices added 0,23% and 0,32% respectively.
Actress Lorna Thayer, the waitress who memorably refused to let Jack Nicholson order toast in the 1970 movie Five Easy Pieces, died on June 4 at the Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement home after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 85.
Hundreds of thousands of grandmothers, some of them in their twilight years and struggling to make ends meet, are getting a second, often dismal turn at motherhood, raising Aids orphans in South Africa. About half of South Africa’s 1,1-million orphans are being raised by their grandparents.
Police in Zimbabwe say they are taking their controversial clean-up campaign to prosperous suburbs of the capital, where they will target ”illegal property developments” and houses that have been turned into offices, the state-run Herald newspaper said on Monday.
Radical latte lovers are getting the bean rolling in a new campaign against big brand coffee giants like Starbucks. In a new and frothy front in the struggle to turn back globalisation, United States coffee lovers are being offered the chance to wean themselves off what critics deride as the same blends and decor of big coffee chains.
The Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism will — by the end of July — appoint a service provider to identify the top 50 air polluting industries or sectors in South Africa, said Minister Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk on Monday. "The web of life is more than just a poetic idea, it is a reality that defines our biggest social, economic and developmental challenges," he said.
Reports of intimidation and violence related to the one-day strike by taxi owners and drivers in KwaZulu-Natal have been received from around the province, traffic officials said on Monday. Thousands of commuters were stranded in the morning as taxi drivers embarked on a protest against the government’s taxi recapitalisation programme.
Legal loopholes mean that more whales will be killed this year than at any time since 1985 and pro-whaling nations are hoping for the first time to have a majority in favour of resuming the hunting when the International Whaling Commission meets on Monday morning.
The effort to combine work and studies is taking its toll on Desiré Rwamagana, a Rwandan refugee who lives in South Africa’s commercial hub, Johannesburg. ”Refugee life is hard. I work in the daytime and go to college in the evening. By the end of the day, I get so exhausted that I can’t even do my homework,” he said.