CLOTHING and household goods retailer Mr Price reported an 18% drop in interim headline earnings, blaming tough economic conditions and start-up costs for its Chilean operation. Mr Price, which primed the market in a profit warning last week, unveiled headline earnings per share at 11.7c versus 14.2c in the 27 weeks to September 1999. The […]

MARIAM ISA, Pretoria | Wednesday GROWTH in South Africa’s main measure of money supply slowed in October while a pickup in demand for private sector credit was below forecasts, backing the case for steady interest rates, according to data released this week. In the year to October the rate of expansion in M3 – which […]

SOUTH Africa’s largest transport and logistics group, Unitrans, says its motor and financial services unit has bought a 40% stake in Southern African operation of Hertz Rent a Car for R4m. Unitrans Motors Managing Director Steve Keys said the deal marked the group’s first foray into the car rental industry. Hertz Southern Africa is a […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Tuesday THE rightwing assassins of South African Communist Party leader and liberation hero Chris Hani have launched a court bid to have their life sentences scrapped. Lawyers for Janusz Walus and Clive Derby Lewis have asked the Cape Town High Court to reverse a decision by the country’s Truth and […]

MOROCCAN police have arrested a Spanish truck driver trying to smuggle 5.35 tonnes of cannabis resin into Spain over the weekend. The 28-year-old driver allegedly loaded the drug into crates marked to be holding octopuses in the southwestern Moroccan town of Agadir. A police investigation is underway. – AFP

SIZWE SAMAYENDE, Nelspruit | Tuesday CONTROVERSIAL insecticide DDT, which has been banned in the United States since 1973 after being linked to cancer, birth defects and neurological damage, will be sprayed in rural homes in Mpumalanga this summer in a bid to kill the mosquito that transmits malaria. Deputy director for vector-borne diseases in the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Tuesday ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe’s party has won a by-election in Harare’s working-class suburb of Marondera in a contest marked by persistent intimidation of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Ambrose Mutinhiri of the ruling Zanu-PF party won the by-election with 7376 votes to the 4366 for Shadreck Chipangura of the […]

NIGERIAN oil workers have gone on strike, holding up output from the world’s sixth largest oil exporter to press demands for a massive pay rise. Nigeria exports more than two million barrels per day (bpd) of high quality crude oil, most of it going to the United States and accounting for eight percent of US […]

NIGERIAN President Olusegun Obasanjo has pledged to speed up the workings of the justice system to reduce the number of remand prisoners in Nigeria. The president, who was jailed for more than three years under the regime of late dictator Sani Abacha, said the government would build new prison buildings and separate convicts from prisoners […]