President Thabo Mbeki and Anglo American’s top executives met behind close doors at Mbeki’s home in Cape Town on Tuesday. Anglo American chief executive Tony Trahar, accompanied by Anglo American South Africa’s newly appointed CE, Lazarus Zim, and chairperson Mark Moody-Stuart, requested the meeting to discuss the company’s financial results.
Italy’s foreign affairs minister said on Tuesday that United States troops killed an Italian intelligence officer by accident, but disputed Washington’s version of events and demanded US authorities thoroughly investigate the incident. The minister said the car carrying the officer and an ex-hostage to freedom was not speeding and US troops did not order it to stop.
Local mobile operator MTN announced on Tuesday that it has joined the Proudly South African campaign. As its members, the campaign lists a number of the country’s original initiatives, companies and organisations — both civil and corporate — who have all pledged to serve the citizens of South Africa with the best products and services.
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Fraud and corruption accused Schabir Shaik backdated two documents to gain financial benefits from French arms company Thomson CSF, the Durban High Court heard on Tuesday. The documents related to a service-provider agreement between Shaik and Thomson, which the state alleges was part of a bribe Shaik solicited for Deputy President Jacob Zuma.
Red tape is the biggest constraint to the expansion of business in South Africa, according to Grant Thornton’s 2005 international business owners survey. Forty one percent of business owners in South Africa cite regulation and red tape as the biggest constraint to the growth of their business, up from 34% last year.
The results of a CT scan done on King Tutankhamun’s mummy indicate the boy king was not murdered, but may have suffered a badly broken leg shortly before his death at age 19 — a wound that could have become infected, Egypt’s top archaeologist said on Tuesday.
How is it, ask the cynics in Beijing, that the Chinese government can pass some of the most beautiful laws in the world yet end up with one of the ugliest environments? It is a question that has haunted leaders since Mao Zedong, who wrote poems as well as legislation in defence of a glorious natural landscape that he then went on to defile.
The Eastern Cape health department on Tuesday began immunising young people to combat a measles outbreak in villages in the Elliotdale area of Transkei. Departmental spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said 35 nurses and 6 000 doses of vaccine have been moved into the area, where about seven villages are seen as under threat.
Municipal pay talks began on Tuesday, described by the South African Municipal Workers’ Union as a ”showdown” between the government’s macro-economic policy and workers’ pockets. The union said the effects of fiscal austerity measures have been severely felt by municipal workers, with increases barely keeping up with inflation.
T-shirt company Laugh It Off argued on Tuesday in the Constitutional Court that its caricature of the Carling Black Label trademark caused no economic harm to Sabmark International, which holds the trademark and licenses it to South African Breweries. The Supreme Court of Appeal found last year that it was illegal to use a caricature of an SAB trademark.