Staff Reporter

The public prosecutor’s office in Paris said yesterday it was opening a formal judicial inquiry into alleged corruption by a French engineering firm and the American oil services giant Halliburton, which was headed until two years ago by Dick Cheney, the vice-president of the United States.

An Iranian human rights lawyer who fell foul of her country’s conservative clerics has won the Nobel peace prize, in what some see as a rebuff to the Pope, who was heavily tipped to win the prize.

The Broadcasting Electronic Media and Allied Workers’ Union (Bemawu) this week said it would lodge a complaint with the Broadcasting Complaints Commission over what the union calls the SABC’s abuse of power and biased reporting. By the time the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> went to print on Thursday, about 3 000 — about 70% of SABC workers — were ready to down tools on Friday afternoon (October 10).

When Hollywood writes the script, logic goes out of the window. Fifteen women moaning about being groped by an outsize actor from Austria is not going to make a blind bit of difference to what the electorate really thinks it wants. Matshikiza comments on the unlikely proceedings of the Californian gubernatorial race.

It would be funny were it not so cruel — the behaviour of the rand, that is. The Springbok is now behaving like a bull in the china shop that is our carefully, sometimes too carefully, managed economy. Except that the delicate ware it is wrecking is economic growth and people’s livelihood.

South African peace brokers saw last week that even when you are able to press a man hard enough to sign you cannot make him sing while he’s doing it. The tuneless ceremony at the presidential guest house in Pretoria told the story as Burundian President Ndayizeye and rebel leader Nkurunziza came together.

Three media organisations have expressed their opposition to the serving of a subpoena on political reporter Ranjeni Munusamy in an attempt to force her to give evidence before the Hefer Commission and testify on the spy allegations against National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka.

A recently constituted environmental action group, the Sasolburg Air Quality Monitoring Committee, is set to fight the air pollution that it alleges oil and chemical group Sasol’s creates in Sasolburg, the organisation said on Thursday.

The continuing strength of the rand poses a serious and immediate challenge to De Beers — the world’s largest diamond miner — which reports its earnings in United States dollars, managing director Gary Ralfe said on Wednesday. A reduction of staffing levels will be necessary.

In yet another twist to the bidding war for New Africa Investments Limited (Nail), the Tiso Consortium — comprising Tiso, Safika, Capricorn, Investec and Mineworkers Investment Company — has announced that it has acquired more Nail and Nail N shares.

South African President Thabo Mbeki has hailed a Burundi peace deal sealed in Pretoria in the early hours of Wednesday, saying the agreement was crucial in solving the "jigsaw puzzle in the heart of Africa". "This is not just paper. It ensures that not another African dies unnecessarily," said Mbeki.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=21597">Burundi’s balancing act</a>

Zimbabwe’s food crisis continues to deepen, with the country’s staple cereal gap for the 2003/04 marketing year (April 1 2003 to March 31 2004) standing at 738 464 tons, of which 671 424 tons is maize, the latest Famine Early Warning Systems Network report on the country says.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi has threatened to throw out Italian companies if Rome did not pay compensation for its 32-year colonial rule. "Italy will lose its interests in Libya if it ignores the signed agreements with regard to these indemnities," Gadaffi said at a women’s festival in Misrata, 200 kilometres east of Tripoli.

Burundian President Domitien Ndayizeye and the leader of the strife-torn central African country’s largest Hutu rebel group signed an agreement in Pretoria early on Wednesday to implement a ceasefire deal hammered out late last year.

The recent wholesale failure of the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq should remind us of an expert who did find such weapons in the Middle East. Mordechai Vanunu discovered and reported a clandestine nuclear weapons factory and, in reward, received a sentence of 18 years in prison, the first 11 in solitary confinement.

Nigerian-funded <i>ThisDay</i> hit the South Africa’s streets with a resounding thump on Tuesday, landing in an already crowded media market where it is expected to face stiff competition. Editor Justice Malala said in an editorial that the newspaper would offer coverage of "politics to business, arts to sport and comedy to science".

Economists have warned of fresh shortages of basic commodities and an expanding parallel market after the Zimbabwean government announced plans for new price controls — to curb what it termed a "price increase madness" — across all sectors of production, to take effect within the next two weeks.

Peace talks for Burundi entered a third day in Pretoria, with rebel and government leaders due to thrash out a power-sharing agreement for the central African country’s transition to democratic elections, officials said on Tuesday.

South African mining output for the three months to August, after seasonal adjustment, reflected an increase of 3,4% compared with the previous three months to May due to a 5% increase in the output of non-gold minerals, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) said on Tuesday.

The Delta Motor Corporation on Monday welcomed the resolution of the two-week strike by close to 3 000 National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa members, which related to sick-leave procedures. The new agreement provides changes to the counselling process for employees who exceed certain levels of sick absence.

At least 23 people, the majority of them women and children, were hacked or shot to death Monday in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN said, in the first reported massacre since UN peacekeepers began patrolling the troubled northeast last month.

The Ugandan army says it has rescued 876 abductees from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in the past two months. The abductees were rescued between 4 July and 5 September, at a time when the LRA was under increasing pressure from Uganda’s armed forces and associated local pro-government militia groups.

Nedbank and Absa have reassured clients of the safety of banking on the internet. The re-insurance comes in the wake of media reports at the weekend that despite efforts to jack up security after recent breaches of their networks, hackers appear to still be able to penetrate some systems.

The African National Congress and the Democratic Alliance continued their traditional squabbling on Friday — turning their attention this time to South Africa’s latest Nobel Prize-winner, author JM Coetzee. The DA insists the ANC owes the author an apology for its 2000 attack on his award-winning novel <i>Disgrace</i>.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=21400">JM Coetzee celebrates in private</a>

When retired English professor Wayne Booth first met JM Coetzee at a Chicago dinner party in the late 1990s, he ran across the room, and dropped to his knees in homage to his literary idol. "He was very surprise and embarrassed," said Booth, describing how the notoriously reclusive writer physically recoiled from him.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=21428">Mandela congratulates JM Coetzee</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=21376">ANC, DA praise Coetzee </a>