PPS Insurance found itself in a tight spot this week after its chief financial officer, Callie Masson, claimed that between R20-million and R25-million was missing from the company’s financials, a charge PPS denies. Masson has now stepped down, saying that there was "a breakdown in trust" between himself and the chairman, according to the resignation letter he submitted to the board.
From the time Bismarck and his pals decided to dismember the continent, Africans have engaged in an endless struggle to put the pieces back together. At the core of this process is reclaiming language, culture, identity and a unique way of being in the world. Nowhere is the failure of action more pronounced than in the education of the African child, writes Mmatshilo Motsei .
Iran rejected a repeated demand by the United Nations Security Council to suspend uranium enrichment work after the 15-nation body imposed arms and financial sanctions on Tehran. At the same time major powers, who drafted the resolution, immediately offered new talks on Saturday and renewed their offer of an economic and technological incentive package.
The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously on Saturday to impose new sanctions on Iran for its nuclear ambitions by targeting Tehran’s arms exports, state-owned bank and elite Revolutionary Guards. The new measures are a follow-up to a resolution adopted on December 23 banning trade in sensitive nuclear materials and ballistic missiles.
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A centuries-old game developed in the public schools of Victorian England is facing a challenge almost beyond imagination with the murder of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer at the cricket World Cup. This expected celebration of cricket and carnival in the West Indies has been overshadowed by the news that Woolmer was strangled in his hotel room in Jamaica.
South Africa’s proposed amendments to a draft United Nations resolution on Iran sanctions were designed to open discussion not scuttle an agreement forged by major powers, a senior official said on Friday. ”It is not written in stone. It is a negotiating position,” Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said in a briefing.
South Africa still has to achieve a total economic transformation in the country, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) said on Thursday. This statement was contained in the party’s policy discussion documents released in Johannesburg. The aim is to stimulate debate in the party’s branches ahead of its national policy conference in June.
Specialist banking group Investec said on Thursday that it is on track to deliver a strong performance for the current financial year. Investec group CEO Stephen Koseff told an investor briefing that operating fundamentals across the dual-listed group have continued the trends seen in the first half.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Britain would urge the European Union to impose tougher sanctions on Zimbabwe, describing the situation there as ”appalling, disgraceful and utterly tragic”. ”We will press the EU to widen the political sanctions that were introduced in 2002 …,” Blair told Parliament during his weekly question-and-answer session.
Chinese cemeteries are selling paper replicas of Viagra pills to be burned for dead relatives as a wish for satisfying sex in the afterlife, state media reported on Wednesday. Customers are snapping up the paper Viagra ahead of the annual Tombsweeping Festival on April 5, the Nanjing Morning News reported.