Indice dei contenuti per 2022-12-21 in Cape Times

NEPI Rockcastle, JSE-listed owner of retail centres in central and eastern Europe, said yesterday it has acquired Forum Gdansk Shopping Centre in Poland from Multi Veste 339, owned by Blackstone managed funds, for €250 million (R4.61 billion). The deal is one of the biggest single asset shopping centre transactions in Europe by value in 2022, a statement said. Forum Gdansk is a 63 500m² gross lettable area shopping centre in Gdansk, the sixth largest city in Poland by population, with over 470 000 inhabitants. Gdansk, together with the cities of Gdynia and Sopot, comprise the ‘Tricity region’, which is considered to be one of Poland’s largest, wealthiest and fastest growing urban agglomerations. NEPI Rockcastle CEO Rüdiger Dany said in a statement the transaction was accretive to distributable earnings and was…

THE DEVELOPMENT Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) has been granted a R2.2 billion loan by the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) to expand its portfolio with strategic projects. AfDB’s board of directors yesterday announced that it had approved the line of credit facility five days ago to the DBSA for energy, infrastructure, and communications technology projects within the Southern Africa region and across the African continent. The facility will provide long-term funding to the DBSA, augmenting internally generated funds as well as loans from other development finance institutions (DFI) and commercial lenders. The DBSA is seeking to raise $1bn (R17.3bn) in funds over the next three years. As it seeks to expand its portfolio, it will focus on clean and renewable energy, infrastructure, ICT, social and women-owned projects in SADC.…

THE Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has cried foul regarding allegations that its senior official, Sy Mamabolo, had an influence on the election of the ANC Top 7. This followed “malicious content” disseminated on Twitter and possibly other social media platforms in an orchestrated disinformation campaign around its purported involvement in the 55th elective conference of the ANC. These allegations were levelled against the IEC despite the fact the ANC has its own elections agency, which for years, especially since its watershed Limpopo conference in 2007, conducted the party’s electoral business. IEC spokesperson Kate Bapela said the content was designed to impugn the reputation and integrity of the IEC and its officials. “In what appears to be a WhatsApp conversation, screen grabs of an instruction issued to Chief Electoral…

RE-ELECTED ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa believes the party has pulled itself back from the brink. “We are emerging stronger as the ANC, but we know that our work is far from done,” he told delegates in his closing remarks at the elective conference in Johannesburg yesterday. He said the ANC had paid in “many ways” for the mistakes it had made. Ramaphosa also conceded that rebuilding and achieving unity and renewal had been a “difficult journey”. “We have encountered many challenges. At times we have met fierce resistance. We made some errors along the way. But we have remained true to the course of the restoration of our movement. This 55th national conference has confirmed that we are on the right path. But more than that, this conference has made…

A VESSEL that could be the origin of an oil spill reported along the Garden Route coast has been identified, according to the municipality. This after the Mossel Bay municipality initiated clean-up operations earlier this month following beach closures due to an oil spill which saw tar-like droplets wash ashore from Mossel Bay to Wilderness. Garden Route District Municipality spokesperson Marillia Veldkornet said: “The origin of the Heavy Furnace Oil is still being investigated. The South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) indicated that a vessel has been identified, but they would only be certain once the fingerprint alkalises of the oil samples collected on our beaches are available.” She said action, as well as the “polluter pays” principle, would be followed as soon as the investigation was completed. Currently…

ROAD accidents statistics and the related deaths have been gradually escalating since the start of the festive season. However, while a car will forever be considered to be one of the most lethal man-made machines, this should not be the case. The fact that the majority of vehicle accidents are the result of human error, or follow a violation of traffic laws, means that these tragedies could be avoided if road users just took extra care. Last week, the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) published a list of roads considered to be the most dangerous in the country. Unsurprisingly, the notorious Moloto Road linking Gauteng with Mpumalanga and Limpopo topped the list. This was accompanied by a warning of the times during which most accidents occurred – between 4pm…

Supplies of basic foods at Egyptian supermarkets have been squeezed and some stores are rationing products, with shopkeepers blaming an import slowdown and speculation by traders as prices rise. Headline inflation has surged to five-year highs of more than 18% in Egypt, spurring many shoppers to cut back on purchases or switch to cheaper goods. Core inflation, which excludes volatile items such as food, quickened to 21.5% in November. The government has reacted over the past week by saying it will draw up indicative prices for key commodities and threatening legal action against shopkeepers who don’t display prices. “There’s shortage in a lot of goods. Prices are increasing and goods are increasingly not available,” said Muhanad Taha, a supermarket manager in Heliopolis, a relatively affluent Cairo neighbourhood. “Some suppliers do…

COPENHAGEN: Pop singer Justin Bieber has lashed out at H&M over clothes featuring the Canadian artist’s image and lyrics, saying the Swedish fashion giant had not obtained his approval. “The H&M merch they made of me is trash and I didn’t approve it,” Bieber wrote on Instagram, encouraging his 270 million followers not to buy it. H&M said it followed proper approval procedures. The fashion retailer was offering hoodies, T-shirts and sweatshirts with pictures of Bieber or quotes from his lyrics for 79.99 (R863) and 349 Danish crowns (R1 978). | Reuters…

Istanbul: Turkey has slammed Sweden’s refusal to extradite a reporter that Ankara has demanded in exchange for its ratification of Stockholm’s Nato membership. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants Sweden to return dozens of people he suspects of involvement in a failed 2016 coup, including the now-closed Today’s Zaman newspaper’s former editor-in-chief, Bulent Kenes. Sweden’s Supreme Court cited the risk of Turkey’s “persecution based on this person’s political beliefs”, blocking the request. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu lashed out at the decision vowing to discuss it at a visit to Ankara by Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom. | AFP…

BERLIN: A 97-year-old woman who worked as a Nazi concentration camp secretary was convicted yesterday for her role in the murder of thousands of people, in what could be one of the country’s last trials for World War II crimes. The court in the northern town of Itzehoe handed Irmgard Furchner a two-year suspended sentence for aiding and abetting the murder of 10 505 people and the attempted murder of five people. The indictment had originally charged Furchner with aiding and abetting the murders of 11 412 people. She was sentenced under juvenile law, because she was aged between 18 and 19 at the time of the crimes. | Reuters…

Could it be? Is it possible? Has it happened? Have the Lions landed a coup with their latest signing? Are they loading Kwagga Smith 2.0? All pertinent questions after the Joburgers unveiled sevens superstar JC Pretorius yesterday as their newest acquisition – a well-known fact for some weeks – but now an official one. Pretorius, who has been nominated for the Springbok Sevens Player of the Year award, has already begun his odyssey in XVs, and in the coming days, weeks and months, the comparisons with Smith – for now at least – will be inescapable. And it could be completely justified Both are products of HTS Middelburg, and like Smith, Pretorius had the Sevens circuit at his mercy when he decided earlier this year to shift focus to full…

THE disciplinary proceedings against ANC MPs who broke rank with the party and voted for adoption of the Section 89 panel on Phala Phala will not be withdrawn. This is according to newly-elected secretary-general Fikile Mbalula when addressing the media at his first press briefing in the position on Monday night. Mbalula said the defiance of MPs in Parliament a week ago had been referred to the party’s disciplinary committee. “It is a straightforward disciplinary issue. The national executive committee (NEC) was briefed about that matter, and that is where it stands and it will not be withdrawn. “The disciplinary committee of the ANC will be seized with the matter and it will be finalised as soon as possible,” he said. Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) Minister…

IN what has become a new phenomenon in the ANC this year, the party’s national conference was adjourned in much the same fashion as some of the provincial conferences. Yesterday, the conference was adjourned until January 5, just ahead of the January celebrations to be held in Mangaung, Free State. However, President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered a closing address at the glitzy conference that included no announcement of the national executive committee (NEC) members. There was also no adoption of constitutional amendments and resolutions of the conference. National chairperson Gwede Mantashe said there were “quite a number of loose ends in the conference, which we must actually close properly and see how we take them forward”. Newly elected secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said the conference programme had been affected by delays…

Cities across China scrambled to install hospital beds and build fever screening clinics yesterday as authorities reported five more deaths and international concern grew about Beijing’s surprise decision to relax restrictions. China this month began dismantling its stringent “zero-Covid-19” regime of lockdowns and testing after protests against curbs that had kept the virus at bay for three years but at a big cost to society and the world’s second-largest economy. Now, as the virus sweeps through a country of 1.4 billion people who lack natural immunity having been shielded for so long, there is growing concern about possible deaths, virus mutations and the impact on the economy and trade. “Every new epidemic wave in another country brings the risk of new variants, and this risk is higher the bigger the…

All 33 suspected militant prisoners who seized a Pakistan police station over the weekend were killed and their hostages freed in a clearance operation by special forces yesterday, the defence minister said. The hostage takers, who were suspected of being members of various militant groups including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), overpowered their jailers and snatched weapons on Sunday. “All the hostages have been freed,” Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said. “Ten to 15 men from the SSG (special forces) including an officer were wounded while two were martyred.” Elite troops stormed the police station around noon when differences broke out between the hostage takers over how to handle their captives, with witnesses reporting blasts and heavy firing. The suspected militants, who were being held on suspicion of terrorism, had demanded…

NEW YORK: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says he does not expect effective peace talks over the conflict in Ukraine “in the immediate future”. “I do believe that the military confrontation will go on, and I think we’ll have still to wait for a moment in which serious negotiations for peace will be possible,” he said. That was why the UN was concentrating its efforts on other aspects, such as the increased efficiency and expansion of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which allows the export of Ukrainian grain and other agricultural products from Black Sea ports, Guterres told an end-of-year press conference at the UN Headquarters in New York. “We are very interested in accelerating the exchange of prisoners of war and especially when we are approaching Christmas,” he said.…

Tokyo: Record levels of snow hitting Japan’s Niigata, Tohoku and other areas north of Tokyo have left vehicles stranded on highways, caused power outages and disrupted transportation, the weather agency and local media said yesterrday. Weather officials said vehicles became stranded in heavy snow on roads in Niigata prefecture, with local media reporting that the Self-Defence Forces were enlisted to help with the situation. The Japan Meteorological Agency reported that the amount of snowfall had reached three times the seasonal average in some areas, with 2.2m recorded in one village in Yamagata prefecture and 1.87m in Niigata. | IANS…

THE National Health Department is falling deeper into a debt crisis due to its failure to pay suppliers, owing nearly R74 million by the end of September, according to the Public Service Commission (PSC). In July the department owed 2 923 suppliers about R73 789 946m, in August it owed R73 789 946m, and as of September 30 it owed 2 929 suppliers R73 778 042m. The Department of Tourism’s non-payment had increased from R2.6m in August to R3.2m in September. PSC commissioner Anele Gxoyiya released the quarterly bulletin yesterday titled, “The Pulse of the Public Service for the period of July 1 to September 2022”. The amounts were sourced from the National Treasury office of the Accountant-General. “The number of unpaid invoices spiralled from 959…

1kg crayfish tails, deveined and cut into 2 or 3 pieces depending on the size 3 tbs sunflower oil 1 tsp garam masala 4 tbs plain yoghurt, optional 2 large onions, grated 3 medium red tomatoes, grated or puréed 2 tsp coriander/koljana 2 tsp cumin/jeera 1 tsp turmeric/borrie 4 green chillies, deseeded and chopped, more or less 1 – 2 tsp red chilli powder 4 large cloves of garlic, grated finely Dhanya leaves (finely chopped) 1 heaped teaspoon salt or to taste 2 tbs lemon juice 1 tbs tomato paste ½ cup water, or as needed Heat the oil in a pot and sauté onions on medium heat till the onions are light brown in colour. Mix in the grated garlic and green chillies. Fry till it turns golden-brown stirring…

IT MAY be a dark Christmas for Delft residents who have been without electricity for six days, while Eskom is unable to provide a timeline for restoration. The blackout has affected about 11 families with small children and elderly who have been left in the dark after being sent from pillar to post when attempts were made to get clear answers from the power utility. Fifty-eight-year-old grandmother, Samaria Dickson said: “It has been six days already since our road has been dark. We don’t know what to do anymore. “We have spent more than R150 each on airtime to try and get proper answers from Eskom to no avail. “We cannot do our daily living, our food is going off and it’s dangerous at night. Here are very old people…

Disgraced US movie titan Harvey Weinstein was convicted this week of the rape and sexual assault of a woman a decade ago, in what prosecutors said was part of his “reign of terror” over aspiring young actresses in Hollywood. The 70-year-old Pulp Fiction producer, once one of the most powerful men in the film industry, faces up to 24 years in jail, in addition to a sentence he is already serving for sex crimes in New York. His victim in the Los Angeles case said she hoped he “never sees the outside of a prison cell during his lifetime”. “Harvey Weinstein forever destroyed a part of me that night in 2013 and I will never get that back,” the woman, identified during the trial as Jane Doe #1, said in…

Middle East adversaries Saudi Arabia and Iran were among countries attending a conference in Jordan yesterday, organised by France and Iraq which aims to provide a forum for discussing the region’s problems. French President Emmanuel Macron is attending the conference. The attendees include the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran, regional rivals that severed ties in 2016, but there has been no word on whether they will meet bilaterally. Iraq has hosted five meetings between Saudi and Iranian officials since last year, but these have not yielded any breakthroughs in relations. Tehran and Riyadh, the leading Shia and Sunni Muslim powers in the Middle East, have backed opposite sides in proxy wars across the region, from Yemen to Syria and elsewhere. Before the conference, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator met…

Washington: US lawmakers yesterday released the text of a $1.7 trillion (R29.5trn) funding bill which Congress hopes to pass in days to avert a government shutdown. The bill includes $858 billion in defence funding and will also provide $44.9bn in emergency assistance for Ukraine. It also includes $772.5bn for non-defence discretionary programmes and provides $40.6bn to help communities hit by recent disasters. Congress last week adopted a short-term budget bill to avert a shutdown of federal services and give Democrats and Republicans more time to reach a compromise ahead of the December 23 deadline. | AFP…

SAN FRANCISCO: A strong 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of northern California yesterday, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said, leaving thousands without power. The earthquake was about 16.1km deep, USGS said, and struck 12km west-southwest of Ferndale, California, a Humboldt County town north of San Francisco. Reports said that there were numerous gas leaks, powerlines down, and at least one structure fire in Ferndale. More than 64 000 homes and businesses were without power yesterday in Ferndale and surrounding Humboldt County. | Reuters…