The decision to recall Roberton’s Peri-Peri Spice from supermarket shelves has been withdrawn, the Department of Health said on Thursday. This was after the department’s forensic chemical laboratories in Cape Town and Pretoria determined that samples of the spice contained no traces of Sudan Red dye, department spokesperson Sibani Mngadi said.
Miners at the Sonop diamond mine in the Northern Cape will picket outside company headquarters in Wolmaransstad, North West, on Friday, the National Union of Mineworkers said. The union claims some workers have not been paid since January 24, and that retrenched workers have not been fully paid.
There will be no overspending on the R8,4-billion budgeted for the 2010 Soccer World Cup, Deputy Sport Minister Gert Oosthuizen said on Thursday. ”We’ll be in on R8,4-billion,” he said at a media briefing following a two-day workshop on the 2010 World Cup African Legacy programmes.
The levels of physical and sexual abuse experienced by South African women and children are unacceptably high and unfortunately still growing, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said on Thursday. She was speaking at the Union Buildings in Pretoria at the launch of the 365 Days national action plan to fight and eradicate gender-based violence.
Hundreds of people have rushed to a village in eastern India to see a male calf defy its herbivore nature by eating live chicks. Poultry farmer Ajit Ghosh said he discovered the calf’s strange behaviour after dozens of his newborn chickens went missing from his combined cow shed and chicken coop.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Thursday accused the government of stubbornly refusing to admit that the affirmative action policy is at the core of South Africa’s skills crisis, and proposed ways to address the crisis. DA spokesperson Mark Lowe emphasised, however, that the DA is not opposed to affirmative action to redress the imbalances of the past.
The United Nations World Food Programme on Thursday expressed deep concern over erratic weather patterns in Southern Africa, which have devastated harvest prospects for millions of people and could spell yet another year of widespread food shortages. Many parts of the region have been struck by devastating floods, which have destroyed tens of thousands of hectares of crops.
Accountants and IT experts will assist the Department of Home Affairs to address problems threatening to bring the department to its knees, Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said on Thursday. Briefing the media in Cape Town, she said a support-intervention team found that the department had serious management problems.
Vodacom workers — members of the Communications Workers’ Union (CWU) — will embark on a strike from March 12, the union said on Thursday. Spokesperson Mfanafuthi Sithebe said the industrial action followed an unresolved dispute on the recognition of CWU by Vodacom. Sithebe said the union had given Vodacom a 48-hour notice on Wednesday on the planned industrial action.
Ugandan peacekeepers suffered their first casualties in an ambush by Somali insurgents after landing this week to help the country’s interim government restore stability, an officer said on Thursday. Captain Paddy Ankunda said two soldiers were hurt when unknown gunmen attacked the troops late on Wednesday in Mogadishu.