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/ 24 November 2006
The government this week successfully fended off a court challenge to school fees regulations intended to protect poor pupils and their parents. Seventeen well-funded public schools in KwaZulu-Natal brought an urgent application in the Pietermaritzburg High Court last Friday to halt implementation of the government’s new regulations on exemptions from payment of school fees.
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/ 24 November 2006
Those officers in the Department of Corrections whose literary tastes tend towards the moister, more urgent arts would have been hard-pressed last weekend to stifle a small shriek of desire when they discovered that Anaïs Nin had escaped from C-Max prison in Pretoria, the bigamist and writer of elegant filth having smeared herself with Vaseline and slithered to freedom through a narrow slit.
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/ 24 November 2006
Raging waters swept away and killed at least five sleeping children as a third week of torrential rains pounded southern Somalia, bringing the flooding death toll to at least 85, officials said on Friday. With downpours continuing and no end in sight to the unusually heavy seasonal, local officials said new overnight floods had hit the south.
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/ 24 November 2006
Rwanda on Friday recalled its ambassador to France and hinted it might break diplomatic relations with Paris in a row over arrest warrants issued by a French judge related to the 1994 genocide. A day after more than 25Â 000 people rallied in Kigali to denounce France, Rwanda’s foreign minister accused Paris of trying to destroy his government.
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/ 24 November 2006
Moody’s <i>Economy.com</i> expects South Africa’s CPIX inflation to peak in the closing months of the year and to linger at the upper end of the central bank’s 3% to 6% target range going into 2007, before moderating steadily. The recent slowdown in retail sales growth was flagged as a sign that monetary tightening is having its desired effect, it added.
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/ 24 November 2006
The JSE was marginally weaker in noon trade on Friday as negative European markets, on which heavyweight dual-listed stocks were down, took their toll. Losses locally were pared by a weaker rand and higher gold price. By 12.14pm, the all share index dipped 0,11%.
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/ 24 November 2006
Politely pouring a cup of tea into a bone china cup in his sumptuous Claridges suite, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe is an unlikely bogeyman. Yet ask many food campaigners to name their least favourite corporate executive and the silver-haired Austrian at the head of the world’s largest food company, Nestlé, would come high on many lists.
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/ 24 November 2006
President Thabo Mbeki on Friday lauded the Holcim-AfriSam deal and lambasted those questioning the Swiss cement company’s motive in selling most of its South African subsidiary to a black consortium. Mbeki said Holcim had decided it made good commercial sense for Holcim South Africa to be black-owned and controlled.
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/ 24 November 2006
German traffic police were shocked to see a California highway patrol car cruising along the motorway, driven by a man dressed as an authentic United States cop, authorities said on Thursday. But they recovered sufficiently to book the 35-year-old Goettingen resident, whose uniform badge read ”TJ Lazer”.
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/ 24 November 2006
A bus driver who was 13 times over the legal alcohol limit while driving a bus load of schoolchildren had a simple request for police who arrested him for drunken driving, an Australian court heard on Wednesday. ”Can I finish my run, at least to drop these kids off?”