The three biggest gold firms in South Africa offered workers a 6% wage hike on Monday, a union official said. Unions declared a dispute, the first legal step towards going on strike, on June 20 after mining firms failed to present an offer on the first day of formal negotiations, but later agreed to return to talks.
The seventh and final book in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series has become online retailer Amazon’s most pre-ordered product. Amazon said that demand for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows passed the record of 1,5-million copies ordered online before the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Kenya’s annual inflation rose to 11,1% in June from 6,3% in May on the back of price increases in food, alcohol and tobacco, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday. However, underlying inflation that excludes food prices fell to 5,2% from 5,7% in May.
Zimbabwe’s leader Robert Mugabe, under fire at home over a crumbling economy, said on Sunday that Africa needed to get its act together and warned that no amount of external aid would lift it out of its quagmire. ”We must unite, not just politically but economically,” he told a cheering crowd in Accra.
The South African Football Association (Safa) has denied that members of its executive committee are seeking R500Â 000 each for supporting South Africa’s successful bid to host the 2010 Soccer World Cup. Safa has now agreed to pay an honorarium of R30Â 000 to members who supported the bid.
A long-awaited international convention against nuclear terrorism will come into force next week, nine years after it was originally proposed by Russia and 10 months after it was adopted by the 192-member United Nations General Assembly. But most of the major powers, including those with nuclear weapons, are giving it a miss — at least so far.
The President of China, Hu Jintao, said political reform in Hong Kong must progress in a "gradual and orderly" way as thousands of people took to the streets to demand more democratic accountability. During ceremonies to mark the 10th anniversary of the handover of the former British colony to China, Hu emphasised the need for more patriotism and loyalty to the mainland.
British anti-terror detectives were hunting on Monday for more members of a suspected militant cell who rammed a burning jeep into a Scottish airport and tried to detonate two car bombs in central London. Cars and other vehicles were banned from directly approaching airports and security measures were stepped up across the country.
South Africa stand-in skipper Jacques Kallis said the way in which younger players had made their mark eased some of the pain involved in a 2-1 one-day international series defeat against India. Three close matches at Stormont ended on Sunday with India’s second successive six-wicket win, this time with four balls to spare.
Though Sudan has accepted the notion of a joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, the operation could still be derailed by a lack of funding and political will, AU chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare said on Sunday at the opening session of the summit of the 53-member AU.