United Airlines yesterday bowed to the inevitable and filed for bankruptcy protection, making it the largest failure in the airline industry to date and among the top 10 collapses in corporate history.
In a major turnaround, Africa’s biggest airline, state-owned South African Airways (SAA) has posted its first operating profit since it was corporatised in 1999.
Financial stocks flipped the South African bourse to a positive close on Friday, as the rand climbed to its strongest level against the dollar this year but gains were capped as a rally in the US fizzled out.
The rand reached R9,27 per dollar on Monday – a 17% improvement against the US dollar since the start of this year, and a massive 35% improvement on the record worst level of R13,86 per dollar reached on December 20, 2001.
South African miner Anglovaal Mining said on Tuesday it would continue to produce cobalt at its loss-making Chambishi plant in Zambia as long as prices hold up.
Standard and Poor’s revised South Africa’s outlook rating from stable to positive on Tuesday, the Treasury said in a statement.
A large arms cache comprising missiles and mortar bombs was destroyed in Mozambique recently as part of an exercise to rid the country of weapons, the South African Police Services (SAPS) said on Thursday.
The landlocked west African country of Niger is increasingly feeling the pinch of an army rebellion in nearby Ivory Coast from where it imports large quantities of consumer goods.
A Palestinian gunman was shot dead on Saturday after he killed an Israeli woman during a raid on a West Bank settlement, capping a day that saw eight people die, despite a Palestinian security official’s meeting with CIA chief George Tenet.
Some University of South Africa (Unisa) staff members downloaded pornographic material from the internet and claimed overtime payment for the time spent watching that, principal Dr Barney Pityana said on Friday.