Staff Reporter

STANDARD Bank on Monday announced a 1% cut in its prime overdraft and mortgage interest rates. The prime rate falls on Friday Februray 12, to be followed by the home loan rate on Monday March 1. “The decrease follows a substantial reduction in the repo rate as well as a general improvement in money market […]

A LEADING logistics practitioner will visit South Africa in April to keynote the local roundtable of the Council of Logistics Management (CLM). John Gattorna, author of The Gower Handbook of Logistics and Distribution Management, will keynote South Africa’s first Logistics Safari Series of conferences in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Mpumalanga. The roundtable is intended to […]

UNITED States Defence Secretary William Cohen is due to arrive in Cape Town on Tuesday morning for talks with Defence Minister Joe Modise and Deputy President Thabo Mbeki. Defence ministry spokesperson Puso Tladi said Cohen will sign a military co-operation agreement. Cohen, on his first visit to South Africa, is also expected to discuss US […]

NIGERIA’S fuel refinery at Kaduna in the north has resumed operations, pumping some 1,5- million litres of fuel a day to a depot in the region, the plant’s manager said on Friday. The restoration of the refinery, under a $214-million contract awarded to French oil giant Total, is a key step in ending the chronic […]

KOSIE LOUBSER stunned the big guns of professional cycling with a superb performance on an intense fifth day of the Tour de Langkawi from Kuala Lumpur to Port Dickson on Sunday that saw the South African step up a notch to third overall on general classification. Loubser is within striking distance of top-class riders like […]

THE handling of local election results in Niger contravenes the West African country’s electoral code, a supreme court judge said on Monday, as reports of criminal irregularities also emerged. Attorney-General Soly Abdourahamane said centralisation of the weekend poll results and their gradual release by the National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) “did not conform with the […]

THE King and Queen of Spain, Juan Carlos I and Sofia, are to visit South Africa from February 15 to 18, according to foreign affairs. The king will participate in a Spanish/South African business conference planned for Johannesburg on February 17.

THE Congress of South African Trade Unions on Monday expressed its shock at Local Government and Constitutional Affairs Minister Valli Moosa’s approval last week for the privatisation of water delivery on the KwaZulu- Natal Dolphin Coast. Spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga said in a statement Cosatu is considering seeking legal advice on the deal. “Cosatu views the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 10.45am. AVENGING their earlier loss at the hands of Kaizer Chiefs, Bush Bucks stole the show in Umtata 1-0 on Sunday. The match provided a few close calls. Bucks’ William Mugeyi gave Brain Baloyi some work to do with a crisp free kick in the 12th minute. Then Chiefs’ Pollen […]

STANDARD Bank Investment Corporation’s offshore investment division will cost the company dearly when it publishes earnings for the year to December 31 on Tuesday, according to analysts. The company is believed to have lost 41,7-million. The London branch alone is believed to have lost 34-million.

FOLLOWING a substantial drop in sales, from an average 1600 a month to around 1000 in January, Hyundai Motor Distributors is planning to retrench up to 10% of its sales staff as part of ongoing restructuring. But workers at Hyundai’s Botswana assembly plant in Gaborone are not expected to be affected. Hyundai is not alone […]

DONALD Gordon, the founder and chairman of South Africa’s Liberty Life (LibLife), unexpectedly announced his retirement on Friday — news that created speculation of a merger with Standard Bank. In a short statement, the insurer said the future of bourse-listed Liberty Investors Ltd, through which the Gordon family exercises control of its dominant shareholding in […]

SEVERAL major diamond producers — Rembrandt’s Trans Hex, Ocean Diamond Mining Holdings and Benguela Concessions — are about to merge, with the first two likely to buy out Benco. A joint cautionary statement was issued on Thursday. Analysts believe the move is inevitable, given Benco’s current listlessness. ODM would stand to gain not only Benco’s […]

THE Johannesburg Stock Exchange wants the laws regulating financial markets changed to allow it to merge with the country’s bonds and futures exchanges, its representatives told Parliament on Thursday. Addressing the finance committee, JSE legal counsel Nicky Newton-King said the merger will make for increased efficiency and lowered costs, making the new exchange internationally competitive.

FOREIGN exchange operations are to start operating on a daily basis in Nigeria from next month to cope with rising demand, the country’s central bank (CBN) said on Friday. CBN spokesperson Tony Ede said that demand at the Automated Foreign Exchange Market in Abuja, the official market for foreign exchange in Nigeria, continued to rise […]

my father …. John Matshikiza:WITH THE LID OFF So, why With the Lid Off? Well, it’s a great title, isn’t it? It says what it means to say. But I don’t claim to have been witty enough to have thought it up by myself. Column titles churned around inside my head for many a sleepless […]

GLAMORGAN seam bowler Darren Thomas just had time to take his fifth wicket for England A before the third day of their match against their Zimbabwean counterparts was washed out again in Harare on Thursday. Thomas took the only wicket in the 75 minutes of play allowed by the rain as Zimbabwe A moved from […]

Jamie Doward Sony is set to capitalise on the success of PlayStation by launching a new portable device which allows users to play its electronic games on the move. The PocketStation plugs into a normal PlayStation and games can be loaded on to the smaller device from the larger one. Users can then play the […]

David Gleason The Heath commission is in possession of extraordinary documents from a secret arbitration that could throw light on the propriety of the R1,5-billion Absa lifeboat. The commission confirmed this week that it is aware of the secret arbitration, presided over by former chief justice Pierre Rabie, which was related to the Reserve Bank’s […]

Andrew Worsdale Pick of the week `This is the richest and most powerful nation of all and so it is the most hated … this country is at war 24-hours a day.” So says Jon Voight in his role as chief of the United States’s national security agency in Tony Scott’s exhilarating paranoid thriller, Enemy […]

TWO Eritrean warplanes bombed the northern Ethiopian town of Adigrat on Friday, the Ethiopian government said in a communique. “The intended target was the fuel depot and its surroundings,” the communique said, without saying whether any bombs struck the depot or whether there were casualties. The alleged strike, which could not be confirmed by other […]

The Lexmark 1000 Color Jetprinter started irritating me when I unpacked it, because it came with a standard thick printer cable. I suppose I should be grateful – colleagues reviewing other Lexmark printers didn’t get any cables. This is rather like selling a toaster without a plug, only worse, as a printer cable costs a […]

society My colleague Mungo Soggot’s glib call for a total ban on guns (“What’s the hold-up on banning guns?” January 29 to February 4 and preceding editorial “Ban guns, build jails, fire Sydney”) is as useful as a call to ban malaria. The fact is that guns are not so much a problem in themselves […]

THE De Beers black empowerment deal involving the high-grade Marsfontein mine in the Northern Province is undervalued by half, it was reported on Friday. It was announced last Friday that a 24% share of the mine will soon be held by black companies. De Beers is selling 49% of its 60% in Marsfontein for R200-million […]

SEVEN people were rescued by the Durban Fire Brigade on Thursday night, after a torrential downpour flooded the city, Radio 702 reports. The seven people were rescued in the Reservoir Hills area after 120mm of rain fell on the city in three hours. Fire chief Mark te Water said: “So far we are working on […]

EMERGENCY workers at Sydney airport in Australia have been commended for preventing what could have been a major air disaster, when a South African Airways jet caught fire shortly after landing. SAA’s regional manager in Sydney, Thevan Krishna, said SA 281 flight had just landed with 140 passengers on board when passengers and the control […]

Fiona Macleod A Pretoria businessman is suing conservation authorities for about R7- million after he discovered that buffalo he bought at a public auction are infected with a disease that is fatal to cattle. At least 150 cattle have died in the past two weeks at a farm in Dundee, KwaZulu-Natal, where the buffalo are […]

Unknown to most of the official delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last weekend, a caravan of 60 leftist economists, researchers and activists had sneaked through the police cordons to stage an “Alternative Davos”. It included intellectuals and activists from all five continents, a motley but determined crew who had spent two […]

A PAIR of Siamese twins who were separated at the abdomen last month have died, a doctor at Pretoria’s Ga-Rankuwa Hospital said on Thursday. The first twin died on Monday and her sister died on Thursday from a blood and bone infection related to prolonged intravenous feeding, paediatric surgery head Lesek Marciz said. The little […]

AMANDA Coetzer beat defending champion and top-seeded Lindsay Davenport of the United States 2-6 6-4 6-3 on Friday in the Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo. The upset sees the seventh seeded South African advancing to the semi-finals — along with Australian Open champion Martina Hingis, who defeated Steffi Graf of Germany 3-6 6-2 6-4. […]

Jonathan Jones on an unlikely affair between Kenneth Tynan and Louise Brooks – and the widow who told their story in a screenplay Martin Scorsese is best known for his films about the violently deranged and delusional, about boxing, vigilantism and the mafia. Now he is set to tackle a story about a British theatre […]

NIGERIA’s military ruler General Abdulsalami Abubakar has won the African Man of the Year Award for 1998. The Nigerian ruler received the award from the African Sun Times, a publication for African readers published in New York. Previous winners of the annual award are President Nelson Mandela and Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings. Abubakar has promised […]