The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) on Monday stated it will now mobilise all 180Â 000 workers in component manufacturing and at petrol stations, car dealers and panel-beating shops for an indefinite strike from September 10, after employers reportedly reneged on a previous in-principle agreement.
Ahmed Idris’s wife is preparing the family’s only meal of the day and there is not enough for their 11 children running around their two little shelters in the middle of the Zamzam refugee camp in Sudan’s Darfur region. The children, some of them with distended bellies, appear malnourished, although their mother says the quantity of the food rations they get has increased considerably in recent months.
Nigerian troops set off for Darfur
Alleged mercenaries Harry Carlse and Lourens Horn have been charged for contravening the Foreign Military Assistance Act. Carlse and Horn arrived home from Zimbabwe on Saturday after a Harare court acquitted them on weapons charges on Friday.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=121328">Forsyth’s fiction close to the facts</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=121284">Trial resumes in Equatorial Guinea</a>
A 155-strong company of Nigerian infantrymen arrived at Abuja aiport on Monday, ready to depart to the war-torn western Sudanese region of Darfur as part of an African Union force protecting ceasefire monitors. ”You are going to Sudan purely to assist our brothers and sisters in restoring a hope that is fast diminishing in them,” said Brigadier General Shekari Biliyak.
It’s a frustrated commuter’s escapist fantasy: literally lifting your car from a clogged highway and soaring through the skies, landing just in time to motor into your driveway. Engineers at Nasa, the Boeing Company and elsewhere say the basis for a flying car is there. At Nasa, the first goal is to transform small airplane travel.
There was no Madonna-Britney Spears kiss, no partially clad Howard Stern coming down from the rafters and certainly no wardrobe malfunctions. The MTV Awards show on Sunday featured typical frenetic energy and sexy style, and a few musical surprises, but it was mostly a kinder, gentler version of past shows.
The case of five soccer referees accused of match fixing was postponed in the Pretoria Regional Court on Monday to October 6. Bail was extended for Reuben Maruping Kgatla, Malose Jonas Mokonyane, Kgomase Michael Sikwe, Masithela Patrick Phandiwe and Christopher Choane.
HIV/Aids could reverse most of the development in Lesotho since independence and could drive the country into extreme poverty, the Central Bank of Lesotho has warned. The impact of the disease is being felt at all levels, with prolonged illness inducing financial hardships in many ways, said the bank’s Economic Review for the first quarter of 2004, released last week.
The intensive transformation process undertaken by the South African Post Office over the past three years is starting to reap rewards for the parastatal. Regarded by many at one stage as the Cinderella of the state-owned enterprises, the post office has for the first time in its 200-year history posted a profit.
Sardine frenzy hit the KwaZulu-Natal south coast on Monday as the tiny silver fish headed back home towards the Eastern Cape. Mike Anderson-Reade from the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board said a huge crowd was gathered at Shelley Beach and that at least 150 baskets had been filled with fish.