In human rights week, young banker Bonga Bangani became an unlikely hero. He sent a five-page letter to Investec, his former employer, complaining about how he had been treated in the course of a one-year contract. His story has resonated with the experiences of many young, black people, who have flooded him with emails and blogged about his letter.
British Finance Minister Gordon Brown announced on Wednesday that he would cut the basic rate of income tax in Britain from 22% to 20% in April 2008. Brown, outlining what is widely seen as his final budget before becoming prime minister later this year, added that it was "the lowest basic rate for 75 years" in Britain.
A rebel leader from Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region said in an interview in Paris that the United Nations must either protect the area’s residents or arm them so they can defend themselves. "Either UN forces come to protect our people or the international community has to arm us to defend our people from genocide," Abdul Wahid Mohammed Nur said in an interview.
The past three years have seen a powerful combination of positive factors contributing to a buoyant local economy — structural reform, high and rising commodity prices, low inflation and historically low interest rates — putting South Africa on a growth trajectory not seen since the 1960s.
Security industry workers have called on the government to introduce a minimum wage in their sector to address shortcomings in their conditions of service. The call was made by members of the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union during a march to the Labour Department’s regional offices in Johannesburg on Tuesday.
Eskom, the state-owned power utility, has released the names of four new power stations it plans to commission over the next five years. "Power stations are given project code names during the planning phases, which include feasibility studies and environmental -impact assessments," Eskom explained in a statement on Tuesday.
North Korea refused to attend a session of six-party talks on dismantling its nuclear programmes on Tuesday while it awaits the return of $25-million in frozen assets, diplomats said. The US Treasury had announced on Monday that about $25-million in North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank could be released, although no timeframe was given.
The tax amnesty for businesses with a turnover of less than R10-million a year expires on May 31 this year, the South African Revenue Service (Sars) warned on Monday. To date, Sars has received close to 18 000 applications for amnesty, said spokesperson Adrian Lackay.
Fast food giant McDonald’s is set to begin a campaign to redefine "McJob" entries in British dictionaries, which it believes are both incorrect and insulting to its workers, the <i>Financial Times</i> reported on Tuesday. "We believe that it is out of date, out of touch with reality and, most importantly, it is insulting …," wrote David Fairhurst, the company’s chief people officer in northern Europe.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir must accept his proposals to augment the Darfur peacekeeping force, as he sent a new negotiating mission to Khartoum. "I regret that President Bashir has made numerous and dangerous objections to the proposals …," Ban said.
An Israeli ministerial commission on Monday decided to officially declare last year’s conflict in Lebanon a "war" after the government had previously refused to use the term. Israel’s committee responsible for official ceremonies, chaired by Cabinet Minister Yaacov Ederi, "decided that the campaign in Lebanon will be explicitly called a war", a statement said.
South Africa is investigating two main sources of biofuel, maize and sugar, and already proponents are starting to square off. The windfalls task team has recommended investment incentives for the manufacture of biofuels, or liquid fuels from indigenous raw materials, excluding crude oil and natural gas.
A strong link between droughts and violent civil conflicts in the developing world bodes ill for an increasingly thirsty world, say scientists, who warn that drought-related conflicts are expected to multiply with advancing climate change. "Severe, prolonged droughts are the strongest indicator of high-intensity conflicts," said Marc Levy of the Centre for International Earth Science Information Network .
Recently, judges in Uganda went on strike to protest against government interference with the judiciary. The strike action followed government security agents’ raid on the high court in Kampala to arrest six opposition supporters. The six men, members of the Forum for Democratic Change led by Kizza Besigye, had been granted bail after being accused of planning a coup and of being members of the People’s Redemption Army.
The national executive committee (NEC) of the African National Congress (ANC) on Saturday rejected the conclusions of a task-team report on the hoax email saga. The NEC meeting focused primarily on the political preparations for the ANC’s 52nd national conference, which will take place in December.
An unofficial state of emergency has been imposed on Zimbabwe by President Robert Mugabe, with police beating people who venture on to the streets after dark and breaking up gatherings as small as four people, residents report. Government gunmen on Saturday seized the body of an opposition activist to prevent his burial from becoming a focal point for the opposition.
It may be called Coca-Cola, but though the drink uses the name of the coca leaf, its maker shies away from confirming whether the leaf is one of its ingredients. Now Bolivian coca farmers want to reclaim the leaf as part of their country’s cultural heritage by forcing the United States drinks giant to change its brand name.
The killing of a British soldier in Iraq by an American pilot was a "criminal, unlawful act" that was tantamount to manslaughter, a coroner ruled on Friday. The family of Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull, who died in March 2003, wept as they were told at the inquest in Oxford that it was "an entirely avoidable tragedy".
Pakistani police fired tear gas, detained opposition leaders and ransacked the offices of a major television station on Friday as protests escalated over the ousting of the country’s top judge. Riot police smashed into the station’s offices after editors refused to stop transmitting pictures of police clashing with protesters.
Visitors to a popular Oslo sculpture park discovered early on Thursday that several naked statues had been censored, with paper rectangles pasted on their genitals and bottoms, Norwegian media reported. "There is enough nudity in the newspaper. Let’s not have it in the park!" read a note posted on a nearby column in the park.
Forget free toppings. A New York restaurant has started offering a $1 000 (about R7 400) pizza covered with caviar and lobster that the owner says is the most expensive pizza on Earth. The Bellissima Luxury Pizza is piled with lashings of caviar, fresh lobster, wasabi and crème fraiche.
Hundreds of R2-D2s will be popping up on street corners all over the United States in the coming months as part of celebrations to mark the 30th anniversary of <i>Star Wars</i>. About 400 mailboxes across the country will be revamped to make them look like the famous chirruping robot from the science-fiction films.
The Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism has warned the public not to eat any shellfish or lobster liver found on the West Coast, following reports of three people becoming ill after eating shellfish collected in Lamberts Bay. The problem may be a result of a toxic red tide, said the department in a statement on Friday.
Takafumi Horie, the internet tycoon who took on Japan’s business establishment with his get-rich-quick mantra, was on Friday sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for securities fraud. Horie (34) showed no emotion as the judge delivered his ruling at the Tokyo district court.
Ethiopia on Friday called for international pressure on Eritrea, which it accuses of holding eight Ethiopians still missing after the release of five European captives this week. A British embassy group of five people was released on Tuesday in Eritrea, but eight Ethiopian drivers and guides accompanying them are still missing.
The Israeli army said on Friday it was investigating the alleged use by soldiers of Palestinian civilians as human shields during a recent operation in the West Bank town of Nablus. In October 2005, Israel’s supreme court banned the use of human shields as being contrary to international law.
It was only a matter of time following the recent round of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe before the world’s foreign ministers started harrumphing.
A lack of information is holding back the potential of cellphone banking to expand access to financial services to the unbanked population. This is one of the key conclusions of the FinScope Mobile Banking Pilot Survey, whose findings were released in Johannesburg on Thursday.
Microsoft opened its 15th TechFest to journalists last week, unveiling up to 100 innovations — some significant, but most of which will never appear in public. It was a wonderfully cosmopolitan event. There were 75 journalists from as far afield as the Russian Federation and Australia, with a sizeable contingent representing India.
The international community should take a "far tougher line" against Sudan over atrocities in Darfur to prevent extremism spreading across Africa, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Thursday. In an interview on Sky News television, Blair offered a robust defence of his views on combating radicalism and said countries need to act to prevent future security threats.
Prime Minister Tony Blair’s likely successor will not reverse a decision to replace Britain’s nuclear deterrent, despite dissent in the governing Labour Party, a senior party official said on Thursday. A parliamentary vote on the issue on Wednesday saw 87 Labour lawmakers vote against government plans to renew the submarine-based Trident missile system.
Maoist rebels in central India have killed 50 police officers in one of their worst-ever attacks in decades of insurgency, officials said on Thursday. A large group of rebels hurled grenades, petrol bombs and fired indiscriminately at a jungle security post in Rani Bodli village in Chhattisgarh state, one of several parts of the country in the grip of a left-wing rebellion.