Staff Reporter

Leading South African companies are world beaters in the profit stakes. The Cabinet was recently handed a document by the Department Trade and Industry, which calls for new interventions, including by the competition authorities, to lower prices charged by top corporations.

Though not posing a threat to South Africa’s financial-system stability, a total collapse in Zimbabwe could have wider political, economic and social consequences for the region, the South African Reserve Bank cautioned on Monday. Economic and political difficulties in Zimbabwe seem to be deepening, it said.

Saddam Hussein, the ousted dictator who delivered a brutal brand of justice to Iraqis during his 24-year reign, faces trial on Wednesday by an Iraqi tribunal which could sentence him to death if he is convicted. Rights groups have amply documented his ruthlessness and cruelty, and the court will attempt to make him answer charges of crimes against humanity during a Shi’ite civilian massacre in 1982.

Finally, the great pharmaceutical case has drawn to a close. In May last year two applications were launched challenging regulations promulgated by the Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang that gave effect to a pricing system for the sale of medicines. The matter was initially heard by three judges of the Cape High Court as a matter of urgency in May 2004.

Darfur seems hell-bent on regaining its appellation earned two years ago as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Three African Union peacekeepers and two contractors attached to the force were killed, recently — the first fatalities for the 6 600 strong continental force in the troubled west of Sudan.

Vote-counting in the Iraqi constitutional referendum should finish within two days, with an initial forecast possibly available at that time, senior electoral official Farid Ayyar said. Meanwhile, mortar rounds landed early on Sunday within the heavily protected Green Zone in Baghdad.

Rail commuters had to be evacuated on Saturday when three motor coaches and three trailers were vandalised and burnt at a station in Springs, Metrorail said. "The management will work with the South African Police Service to put an end to this criminal activity," said Metrorail spokesperson Thandi Mlangeni.

The Print Media Association (PMA) is finalising a major study that for the first time maps "transformation, skills development, language and ownership" as well as the advancement of black people, women and disabled persons in the print media industry.

Have children? Feel like a quiet weekend? Why not rent your kids out to complete (and paying) strangers for the weekend, to get some peace and quiet? Yes, you read it right — instead of lying around the house in some enforced phase of extended stupidity known as "childhood", your children could be earning you big money, every weekend!

Syria’s former strongman in Lebanon, who was questioned over the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, committed suicide in his Damascus office on Wednesday, the government said. Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan spoke to Voice of Lebanon radio earlier on Wednesday and said it would be his "final declaration".

Thirty people were killed on Wednesday when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a large crowd of people outside an army recruitment centre in the north-western Iraqi town of Tal Afar, police said. The attack, which also left 35 people wounded, came just a day after another attack in the town killed 30 people at a crowded market.