Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana has called on trade unions representing striking security guards and employers to resume negotiations, the government news agency, BuaNews, reported on Tuesday. Mdladlana said he had been asked to intervene in the impasse over wages and working conditions in the security industry. But, he said, according to the law he could not do so.
Less than three months after opening for business, Absa Islamic Banking announced on Tuesday that it will offer two more products to its Sharia-compliant offering. These are a cheque and savings account. And, as is the case with all other Absa Islamic Banking products, the new additions meet the conditions laid down by Islamic law.
Sudan’s Islamist opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi on Tuesday criticised the Darfur peace agreement signed earlier this month as partial and incomplete, a senior official from his party told Agence France-Presse. The Popular Congress Party head met with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan’s top envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk.
Nepal’s interim government announced the long-awaited final names for an 18-member Cabinet on Monday but was immediately rocked when one minister refused to take her post. The top seven jobs were appointed 20 days ago, with 11 more names announced on Monday, including the education, tourism and water-resources portfolios, state-run media said.
Police in Chad have released the former head of an independent radio station, Tchanguiz Vatankhah, who was detained for more than three weeks for his political activities, a media body said on Monday. Vatankhah, who is president of the Chad Union of Privately Owned Radio Stations (URPT), was freed last Friday, said a URPT statement.
Jurors began a third day of deliberations on Monday in the fraud trial of former Enron chief executives Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay, after a weekend break. The deliberations, in what is seen as the biggest corporate fraud trial in recent years, could lead to big prison terms for Skilling (52), who faces 28 counts of fraud and conspiracy, and Lay (64).
MIT’s "$100 laptop" and the One Laptop per Child initiative have created a huge buzz, but does it make sense for the developing world? Linux International executive director Jon "Maddog" Hall offered an alternative for South Africans at the LinuxWorld Johannesburg conference last week.
Imagine you cannot speak, or move your hands, and your only means of communication is through a voice synthesiser that only speaks in European languages and costs a fortune. Researchers are developing open-source technology that aims to enhance the lives of people with disabilities in South Africa.
Warner Music International (WMI) and Johnnic Communications (Johncom) on Monday announced a joint venture to create Warner Music Gallo Africa, a new music-based content company in South Africa. The deal will bring leading global music company WMI together with Johncom, South Africa’s innovative and ambitious media and entertainment company.
Japanese electronics giant Sony and telecoms operator KDDI will jointly develop cellphones with music player features as competition heats up in the sector. Sony and KDDI, Japan’s number-two telecoms operator, hope for a summer launch for the Walkman phones, which will include flash memory capable of storing about 500 songs.
A Zimbabwe government minister said on Sunday that proposals by President Robert Mugabe’s government to take control of foreign-owned mines will take longer to implement as negotiations are still ongoing with the industry. The Chamber of Mines has presented a less radical proposal to the government on empowerment.
Emboldened by the acquittal of Jacob Zuma, leaders of the African National Congress and South African Communist Party youth leagues have become more strident than usual, and the politics of demagogy threaten to choke the national discourse. Why, I’ve wondered, have their various mad ramblings gone unchecked?
Nigerian authorities on Friday allocated two lucrative oil blocks to companies based in the Niger Delta in a bid to douse tensions in the oil-rich restive southern region. Two oil firms — Cleanwaters Consortium and Niger Delta United — were allocated operating production licences 289 and 233 respectively during a bidding exercise.
Israel and South Africa carried out a nuclear test on an offshore platform in the northern Antarctic in 1979, according to a newly disclosed United States document, <i>Yediot Aharonot</i> newspaper said on Friday. The document says a mystery explosion detected on September 22 1979 by a US satellite was a nuclear test.
Zimbabwe immigration authorities on Friday barred top South African labour leader Zwelinzima Vavi from entering the country, immediately putting him back on a South African Airways plane that had brought him to Harare International airport. Vavi, who is general secretary of the powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), is an outspoken critic of President Robert Mugabe’s controversial rule.
World number four gold miner Gold Fields announced on Friday that it had acquired an extra 18,27-million Western Areas shares at a price of R40 per share for a purchase consideration of about R731-million. The acquisition increased Gold Fields’ total stake in Western Areas to 23,27-million shares, or 15,47% of that company’s total issued share capital.
Harry Potter’s stolen flying car has been found after mysteriously disappearing from a film set, British newspapers reported on Friday. The pale blue 1962 Ford Anglia, driven through the air by the boy wizard and sidekick Ron Weasley in the hugely successful Harry Potter films, was in storage on a film set in Cornwall, south-east England, when it was stolen last October.
‘I fear we will live to regret the 2007 conference," a senior African National Congress figure told the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> recently. He was referring to the fevered atmosphere of power-lust, greed, fear, revenge and conspiracy gripping the party as a consequence of the battle between Jacob Zuma’s supporters and detractors.
Recently Transnet CEO Maria Ramos resolved a nine-month dispute with four striking transport unions that threatened to derail the restructuring of the transport parastatal. The unions decried her unilateral efforts, but the agreement largely keeps her reform agenda on track with the difference now that the unions are on board as part of the process.
I have come into the possession of a most intriguing document. It is a questionnaire currently being sent out to authors by South African publishing houses; clearly a first attempt to put plagiarism on a professional footing. Plagiarism, of one form or another, is the newest trend in South African post-transformation creative writing, and is fast gaining popularity.
Shelve the abiding fiction that disasters do not discriminate — that they flatten everything in their path with "democratic" disregard. Plagues zero in on the dispossessed, on those forced to build their lives in the path of danger. Aids is no different.
Strasbourg in spring is a delight. Blossoms swirl in a warm breeze drowsy with Chanel and partially digested sauerkraut. Along the canals nannies shunt prams, little Jean-Ennui or Klaus-Glockenspiel wrapped snugly in a cocoon of cotton and human rights legislation. Up in the narrow cobbled streets, blackbirds sing from rooftops.
Jurors deliberated for a second day on Thursday in the fraud trial of former Enron chief executives Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay, who led the energy giant before its spectacular meltdown in 2001. After more than three months of testimony from 55 witnesses, the government concluded its closing argument on Wednesday.
Japanese police said on Tuesday they found the bodies of 100 cats, some badly decomposed, in the apartment of a woman who found it hard to part with her pets even after they died. The woman, who had adopted sick and stray cats for years, kept the bodies in containers.
Whoever George Green is, he now has a good excuse for standing up Gwen at Monty’s — 56 years ago. That’s how long it took her handwritten letter to George to reach Trinity College in Cambridge, eastern England, where it arrived the other day, postmarked in London on March 3 1950.
A musical mystery surrounded Britain’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis, on Wednesday after a piano was discovered near its 1 347m summit. The piano was recovered at the weekend by 15 volunteers from the John Muir Trust, a conservation charity that owns the Scottish peak.
A New Zealander’s plan to sell his amputated leg has been tripped up by police and an internet auction website. Shane Torrance (42), whose tattooed right leg was amputated 15 months ago, wants to sell it to cover his debts and raise money for his daughter who has diabetes, <i>The Nelson Mail</i> reported on Thursday.
If the forecasts are to be believed, Japan’s players in next month’s World Cup are small fish in a big pond. An aquarium in Yokohama is organising a piscine World Cup, in which fish the colours of national teams fight for a ball packed with bait in a tank holding two goal posts.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Thursday accepted Parliament’s rejection of a constitutional change that would have enabled him to stand for a third term in office, saying it was victory for democracy. "For me and for all members of our party, the outcome is victory for democracy," Obasanjo said.
The outlook for inflation continues to be generally favourable, with CPIX inflation expected to remain inside the target range until the end of the forecast period in 2008, South African Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni said on Thursday. He cautioned however that risks and challenges remained and that vigilance was required.
The world’s first "theme park" dedicated to sex and relationships is set to open in London’s bustling West End later this summer, its promoters said on Thursday. Amora: The Academy of Sex and Relationships, featuring "high-tech and interactive exhibits together with new media displays," expects up to 600 000 visitors within its first year in the Trocadero Centre at Piccadilly Circus.
In car-industry terms, the listed property sector has just survived a high-impact "crash test" and demonstrated its built-in strength, according to Mariette Warner, head of property funds at Stanlib Asset Management. The crash test was laid on by South African Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni in late March with his comments on inflation and hints of higher interest rates.