The Côte d’Ivoire electoral process is falling into place. The Independent Electoral Commission is in place and functioning. Antonio Moneteiro, the United Nations high representative for elections, left the country this week, his job done. The presidential candidates are starting to make themselves heard.
Transnet and four unions have embarked on a new collective approach to resolving the long-running dispute over plans to restructure the group into a focused and efficient state-owned freight transport company, a spokesperson for the transport parastatal said on Thursday evening.
Nearly 60% of "foreign-brand" liquor found in four major Chinese cities is fake, according to a random check carried out by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce. The administration inspected 40 bottles, mostly cognac and whisky, in 19 retail outlets and found 23 with Hennessy, Remy Martin, Martell and certain Scotch whisky labels were fake.
A call by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai for mass protests against President Robert Mugabe resonates among the majority of Zimbabweans and has dramatically raised the country’s political stakes, but could well fail if the opposition movement remains divided, analysts said.
Negotiations between Zimbabwe and Rand Merchant Bank of South Africa for a $1-million loan facility have virtually collapsed after Harare failed to prove it was able to pay back, authoritative sources told independent news source <i>ZimOnline</i> on Thursday.
India’s ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi resigned from Parliament on Thursday following opposition allegations that she had breached parliamentary regulations by holding other salaried posts. "I have done this because I think it is the right thing to do," she told reporters.
South Africa’s Standard Bank has entered into a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Credit Suisse to jointly develop a South African institutional agency stockbroker, to be named Credit Suisse Standard Securities. The joint venture will incorporate the current institutional agency stockbroking business of Standard Bank.
Our watchdogs are waking up — the guardians of the public good across the private and public spheres are baring their teeth in favour of the citizen and the consumer. It has come not a moment too soon, as these offices are vital to ensuring transparency in public process and private transaction.
One of Italy’s top executives was caught speeding on a motorway in northern Italy at 311kph while trying out his new car, the press reported on Saturday. Riccardo Ruggiero runs Telecom Italia, the country’s main telecoms operator with a turnover of €30-billion last year.
Polish education inspectors have banned a CD with a painting by Hieronymus Bosch reproduced on its cover from being distributed in schools, saying the picture, entitled <i>Hell</i>, could harm young people. "There are pornographic scenes in the Bosch picture that can damage people," said one school inspector.
Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana has urged parties involved in the wage dispute affecting the private security industry to return to talks and seek an amicable solution to the issue. Thousands of security guards are expected to embark on a nationwide strike on Thursday following unsuccessful negotiations with employers in the sector.
Global resources group Anglo American continued to be "profoundly dissatisfied" with the company’s safety performance, Anglo chairperson Mark Moody-Stuart said in the group’s 2005 annual report. During 2005, 46 people died at Anglo’s managed operations compared with 49 in 2004.
Deutsche Bank’s research team has been ranked first across the Emerging Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region in the 2006 Institutional Investor (II) Emerging EMEA Research Team survey — up from second position in 2005. The annual II survey determines the best sell-side equity research coverage in the region.
South African brewing giant SABMiller said on Wednesday that following receipt of approval from the Slovak Anti-Monopoly Office on Monday March 13 it had acquired 48,4% of the Slovakian brewer Topvar. The controlling shareholders will sell further shares to enable SABMiller to increase its interest to at least 67% by the end of September 2006.
Traditional healers in Zimbabwe’s southern Masvingo province have called on the government to allow them to visit public hospitals to administer herbs to patients who are otherwise not getting much help from the state institutions because of a shortage of medicines.
Shooter Diane Swanton won South Africa’s seventh gold of the Commonwealth Games on Tuesday but was pushed all the way to the women’s trap title by a heavily pregnant rival. The 25-year-old from Pretoria marked her Games debut with a score of 92, six better than Rebecca Madyson who took silver for Malta with 86.
Troops headed for cyclone-devastated north-east Australia on Tuesday as Prime Minister John Howard pledged quick aid for those left homeless or without power by the country’s worst storm in decades. Cyclone Larry hit the Queensland coast as a highest-level category-five storm on Monday, destroying hundreds of homes.
South African-based Comazar, in which state-held Transnet owns 31,6%, has been selected to administer the 106-year-old railway line that runs from Addis Ababa to Djibouti, Chinese news agency Xinhua reported on Monday. Citing sources close to the Ethio-Djibouti Railway Company, the agency reported that Comazar will be authorised to operate the railway.
Hollywood, predictably, has dominated this month’s interest in world affairs. Hundreds of people might have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the course of the continuing military occupation of those countries by the United States and Britain, contrary to the perception that colonialism and the Cold War were things of the past.
Falls in interconnect rates — the amount operators charge each other to use their networks — have not always led to reductions in the prices charged to customers, says international expert Robert Hall, author of a new report titled <i>Setting Interconnection Prices in Africa</i>.
Former Estonian president Lennart Meri, a leading political figure in the Baltic states after they won independence from Moscow in 1991, has died at the age of 76, the president’s office said. The former writer and filmmaker had undergone an operation in August last year for brain cancer.
One of Paris’s most famous chefs, Rene Lasserre, who founded the legendary restaurant that bears his name, has died at the age of 93, the current owner said on Thursday. Lasserre, who stepped down from the helm five years ago, died late on Wednesday, said Gerard Louis-Canfailla.
Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, who was buried on Saturday, carved out his own niche in European history as a bully firebrand who stoked brutal ethnic conflict and presided over disaster. The "Butcher of the Balkans" defied international sanctions and Nato bombs over nearly a decade of strife in the former Yugoslavia.
Short-term macroeconomic indicators thus far suggest that economic expansion is clearly moderating, according to Absa senior economist Ridle Markus. He says Absa’s expectation that overall economic growth could come in just above 4% year-on-year in 2006 is still intact, with no evidence suggesting substantially higher growth for the year.
Dimension Data, a global IT solutions and services provider, has been praised by the Botswana government for its Citizen Empowerment Partnership initiative with Principal Investments, a group of local Botswana business persons who acquired a 49% equity stake in Dimension Data Botswana earlier this year.
International financial- and risk-services group Alexander Forbes (AFB) denied reports on Monday that it was the subject of an investigation by the Financial Services Board (FSB) into the alleged skimming of pension fund surpluses. The group said that since 2000 the FSB has been conducting an investigation.
Allegations of incompetence, conflict of interest and inadequate consultation are being levelled at fisheries authorities as appeals against the allocation of R70-billion in long-term fishing rights flood in. Some 4Â 000 appeals are expected from 20 fisheries, from deep sea hake trawl to south coast rock lobster
A former Malaysian snake farm worker may have set a new world record after kissing a poisonous snake 51 times in three minutes, a report said on Sunday. Shahimi Abdul Hamid’s feat in kissing the 4,6m-long king cobra weighing 10kg 51 times in three minutes and one second was a record waiting to be verified, the <i>Sunday Star</i> newspaper said.
The United Nations war crimes tribunal on Friday fended off speculation that former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was poisoned in its custody, citing provisional tests which showed no signs of foul play. Toxicological tests found "no indication of poisoning" nor any presence in his blood of rifampicin.
Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has formally asked Nigeria to hand over her exiled predecessor Charles Taylor, a spokesperson for Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Friday. Taylor, who has been accused of committing war crimes by international prosecutors in Sierra Leone, was given political asylum by Obasanjo in August 2003.
Johannesburg can look forward to accelerated business and leisure tourism in 2006 and beyond, according to Eddy Khosa, CEO of The Johannesburg Tourism Company (JTC), which is spearheading the drive for growth in both international and domestic tourism to the city.
Review by <b>Mphuthumi Ntabeni</b>