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/ 1 August 2007

SA Women: Foreword

A happy, warm women’s month to all of you. Our book is my very favourite publication every year for it is a little book of inspiration and aspiration, of role models and a symbol of a country where the shape and form of leadership has been made more diverse and fair. This is a direct […]

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/ 1 August 2007

Women in charters

Researched and compiled by Lloyd Gedye and Yolandi Groenewald ICT Sector (Final Draft) Skills Development (by Feb 2015): Commit 2% of payroll in addition to the current skills development levy for investment in skills development of black people, black women, black youth and black people with disabilities and provide learnerships equivalent to 5% of employees. […]

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/ 1 August 2007

Does your school need water?

If you have enough drinkable water in a borehole near your school, your institution could benefit from a multimillion-rand expansion drive by PlayPumps International and Round­about Outdoors. The drive aims to improve the lives of 10-million people in the next three years through the delivery of playpump water systems to communities where access to water is still a challenge.

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/ 31 July 2007

UK killer shark dismissed as red herring

Claims that a killer shark has been spotted off the English coast were dismissed on Tuesday as alarmist, just as holidaymakers head en masse for the seaside. The scare started after a tourist took pictures of a menacing-looking fin jutting from the water last week, 180m from the beach near the popular Cornish resort of St Ives.

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/ 31 July 2007

Strike by De Beers miners to go ahead

About 11 000 South African miners working for De Beers, the world’s biggest diamond company, planned to launch an indefinite strike on Tuesday in a dispute over pay, their union spokesperson said. "The strike action will go ahead as planned," National Union of Mineworkers spokesperson Lesiba Seshoka said.

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/ 31 July 2007

Books to walk you through BEE

Vuyo Jack, the young god-father of BEE, is no grey businessman with a one-track mind and an eye only for the figures. He is a philosopher who believes in meditation and had he not decided on becoming a chartered accountant, he would have been a musician and a filmmaker.

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/ 30 July 2007

Asean means acronyms for baffled media

There may be "Aida" and even some "Fans" — but the jumble of Asean acronyms isn’t music to anyone’s ears. For the hundreds of reporters who can’t tell their Aasroc from their Elto, the blizzard of bureaucracy at the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) meetings can be pretty daunting.

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/ 30 July 2007

Somali Islamists defend insurgency

Somalia’s exiled opposition leaders on Monday lashed out at the international community’s support for the Ethiopian-backed interim government and defended the deadly insurgency against Mogadishu. "The resistance of Somali people is a legitimate response" to Ethiopian occupation, former Parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden said.

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/ 30 July 2007

What about us? Small rail operators

Fancy a nostalgic train safari to Mpumalanga or Victoria Falls? Better not get your hopes up, warn private train tour operators. They complain that a shortage of locomotives, coupled with poor planning, has made business conditions increasingly difficult. While major players are known to be affected, smaller operators have had to close down.

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/ 30 July 2007

The turnaround guy?

Shaun Liebenberg is the turnaround guy. He’s in charge of spearheading Denel’s restructuring and consolidation. If he pulls it off, he’ll have led one of local business’s biggest success stories. Problem is, that’s a big if. Denel made a R549-million loss this year, which is a significant improvement over last year’s loss of R1,36-billion, but it’s far from turning a profit.

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/ 30 July 2007

A hell of an affair

"A wise and courageous decision," the then- vice-president FW de Klerk called it when we met in Amsterdam in 1995. These few encouraging words dispelled all our doubts about moving to South Africa. In April 1996, with my wife Patricia and son Ludo, we left Holland behind.

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/ 29 July 2007

The rise and fall of the SABC

Soon after I started working at the SABC in 2002, I was asked to chair a panel to hear the appeal of a Limpopo reporter who had been dismissed for "bringing the SABC into disrepute". The man had killed his wife. He was appealing his dismissal because, as he said, it was his own wife and he had done it "on his own time" — he had been on leave. We rejected his appeal, and later the courts sentenced him to a lengthy jail term.

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/ 27 July 2007

Sars warns against tax deductions for crime

The South African Revenue Service (Sars) has cautioned taxpayers not to be misled by irresponsible tax advice when they complete and submit their income-tax returns. Sars has taken note of public calls from certain lobby groups who are advising people incorrectly on how to complete their tax returns in a manner of protest.

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/ 27 July 2007

Lower returns, longer lives

With lower total returns expected across all asset classes for the next three to five years and people living in retirement far longer, investors looking for inflation-beating returns would be wise to consider allocating a higher proportion of their savings to growth assets, like equities.

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/ 27 July 2007

National Credit Act: Know your rights

In terms of the new National Credit Act, insurance companies, under prescribed conditions, can access consumer credit information to assess applications for insurance. However, consumers must give their consent before an insurance company is allowed to pull their credit data from credit bureaux for insurance assessment purposes.

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/ 27 July 2007

Take charge of your debt

The National Credit Act means that lenders need to be more circumspect about granting debt, but this doesn’t absolve consumers from taking responsibility for their own financial affairs. "You can still get into trouble if you aren’t careful about managing your financial affairs," says ICE spokesperson Paul Maggott.

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/ 27 July 2007

In Japan, even sex goes high-tech

The Japanese love technology so much that now even sex toys are on the cutting edge. The "gPod," a phallic-shaped vibrator, is designed to respond automatically to sounds picked up by an accompanying handset, which can plug into anything from a telephone to a music player to a television.

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/ 27 July 2007

Mounties chase rebel bees after hive coup

Mounties in eastern Canada were called in to help round up rogue honeybees after a palace coup this week caused a split in the hive, a spokesperson said on Thursday. "The beekeeper came to us and said that he lost half of his bees, about 30 000 to 40 000 of them," said Cheryl Decker, spokesperson for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

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/ 27 July 2007

Petrol price set to fall on August 1

The retail price of all grades of petrol will fall by 15c per litre (c/l) on Wednesday August 1, the Department of Minerals and Energy announced on Friday. This follows an 8c/l fall on July 4 and a 23c/l rise that took effect on June 6. The latest changes bring the retail price of a litre of 95 octane unleaded petrol in Gauteng to 701c/l and to 677c/l at the coast.

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/ 27 July 2007

Chinese correspondent AWOL in Zimbabwe

A correspondent for China’s international radio station who has not been seen since apparently abandoning his post in Zimbabwe was officially warned on Thursday to return to work. China Radio International posted a notice in the <i>China Daily</i> newspaper saying that Cheng Qinghua "left his post without authorisation" on April 20.

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/ 27 July 2007

The perfect fit?

Steven Pienaar’s recent move to English Premiership side Everton has once again highlighted the fact that very few South African players can cut it in Europe’s big leagues. You can count on two hands the number of South African players who have been successful in Europe.

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/ 27 July 2007

Sorry and thanks

We love our jobs. South Africa is going through a complex, often fraught, but ultimately very exciting transition, and we are right in the heart of the hurly-burly. The paper we bring you each Friday is the product of thousands of decisions, some of them very difficult, and a process of gathering, sifting and managing information on a baffling scale.

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/ 26 July 2007

Could hospital cat be angel of death?

He is a two-year-old cat and looks innocent enough. But at the nursing home where he lives in the United States state of Rhode Island, Oscar has developed a reputation as an angel of death. Since being adopted, he has revealed a rather morbid tendency to pick which patient is going to die next.

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/ 26 July 2007

Miners vote to strike in De Beers dispute

South African miners working for De Beers, the world’s biggest diamond company, have voted to go on indefinite strike from next week in a dispute over pay, their union said on Thursday. National Union of Mineworkers chief negotiator Peter Bailey said the vote to strike from next Tuesday was taken on Wednesday night after talks with De Beers reached an impasse.

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/ 25 July 2007

Grindrod Bank proud of BEE deal

Grindrod, the listed shipping and logistics business, on Wednesday announced the sale of 18% of its subsidiary, Grindrod Bank, to three independent black economic empowerment (BEE) entities. Alan Olivier, Grindrod Limited CEO, said the vision of Grindrod Bank is to become a meaningfully empowered bank.