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/ 30 November 2003
South Africa’s economy is bleeding jobs as the powerful
commodity-driven rand hurts exports and cuts growth, analysts say.
”The strength of the rand and a global economy that is not yet back at full steam leads us to caution against expectations of a speedy return to GDP growth in excess of three percent in 2004,” said John Loos, an economist with Absa bank.
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/ 29 November 2003
Former MPs who have served at least five consecutive years in Parliament will receive four free single air-travel tickets for every year of service up to a maximum of 15 years, according to a National Assembly motion on Thursday. The economy class air tickets are ”for the personal use” of an ex-MP and his/her accompanying partner.
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/ 29 November 2003
The process of holding government to account breaks down at critical points in the oversight cycle, says Public Service Accountability Monitor director Colm Allan.
He made his comments as the ANC gets ready to put many of those already in Parliament on its list of candidates for the next general election and most likely back in the legislatures.
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/ 29 November 2003
"We are armed and ready for anything," the young man said, patting the bulge of a gun under his shirt. He stood on the pavement with a group of five other men, watching as the Sheriff of the Court evicted 90 families from the Newtown housing cooperative in Jo’burg’s inner city. Paying tenants in a Newtown housing cooperative are fearing for their lives.
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/ 29 November 2003
Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Saturday refused to back down on his position that Zimbabwe should remain suspended from the Commonwealth after the African country’s president Robert Mugabe accused him of a vendetta.
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/ 29 November 2003
Nine people have been killed and an Italian missionary wounded in rebel attacks in northern Uganda in the past two days. An orphaned boy was killed and an Italian missionary travelling with him was injured when Lord’s Resistance Army rebels ambushed the priest’s vehicle in northern Uganda’s Lira district on Friday.
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/ 29 November 2003
The Return of the King, the third and final installment of the blockbuster movie series The Lord of the Rings, was shown to a select invited audience of international film critics and entertainment writers on Saturday — but they had to sign an agreement not to publish any reviews until after December 8.
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/ 29 November 2003
The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, yesterday declared Israel in violation of international law for flouting a UN resolution calling for its ”security fence” around the West Bank to be dismantled. The fence ”could damage the longer-term prospects for peace”, Annan wrote in a report requested by the UN general assembly.
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/ 29 November 2003
”It’s absolutely bloody fantastic,” says 17-year-old Adam Frew. ”I’ve just finished school, it’s the start of the summer, and I’m standing on a beach with 20 000 chicks. Life could not get any better.” Along with nearly 50 000 other school leavers, he has come to Surfers Paradise to celebrate schoolies week, a rite of passage in Australia since the 1980s.
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/ 29 November 2003
North Korea called on Europe to prevent the peninsula from becoming a ”second Iraq” yesterday, as Pyongyang’s scepticism grows about the credibility of six-party talks aimed at resolving its year-long nuclear standoff with the US.