The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on Wednesday stated that after reaching an agreement on benefits and conditions of employment with platinum producer Angloplat, it is confident that a settlement on wages will be reached. The NUM cut its wage demand from 15% to 8% while Angloplat had increased its initial offer of 2,5% to the level of CPIX inflation, currently running at around 4%.
United States workers are goofing off for two hours a day, trawling the internet or jawing with co-workers, costing their employers -billion a year, according to a new survey. Other ways of frittering away time included making personal phone calls, running errands and an activity described as ”spacing out”.
A four-year-old boy who hid inside a duffel bag that was placed out with the family trash was nearly crushed in a garbage truck’s compactor before a sanitation worker heard him scream. Jacob Deates had climbed inside the duffel bag just as the garbage truck came by on Monday morning.
”Beware the wounded animal,” warned Bafana Bafana general manager Stanley ”Screamer” Tshabalala before Wednesday night’s Concacaf Gold Cup game against a down-in-the-dumps Guatemala at Houston’s Reliance Stadium. ”Bafana turned the tables on Mexico in our opening fixtures when no-one gave us a chance of winning,” said Tshabalala.
Like millions of Harry Potter fans, Katherine Moss can’t wait to get her fingers on a copy of the sixth entry in JK Rowling’s best-selling series. And for once, the 16-year-old blind student won’t have to wait weeks longer than her sighted friends to dive into Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Former United States president Bill Clinton will embark on a week-long, six-nation African tour this weekend aimed at boosting the work of his foundation in combatting the scourge of HIV/Aids in the continent. Clinton will seek to ”reinvigorate political will” for scaling up HIV/Aids treatment programmes.
Asia faces a 150% increase in HIV/Aids infections over the next five years unless more is done, a report warns.
Abnormally warm weather off the Pacific coasts of Alaska and Canada has decimated the plankton population off shore from Northern California, Oregon and Washington state, causing widespread seabird mortality and potentially devastating the marine food chain, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Tuesday.
A witness on Tuesday gave a gruesome account of how a massacre in the Democratic Republic of Congo took place last weekend, accusing the perpetrators of locking up innocent people and then burning them. The headmaster of Ntulumamba’s primary school, who only gave his name as Bisimwa, managed to flee when the disaster unfolded and walked 70km to find help.
Two vehicles believed to be linked to Thursday’s bombings in London were found in a Luton car park and at a home belonging to a South African woman living in Leeds’ Dewsbury area for more than 20 years, media reports said on Wednesday.