Thursday March 1, 2012.

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Shannon de Ryhove.

Making headlines:

ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema has been expelled from the ANC, the party's national disciplinary committee (or NDC) chairperson Derek Hanekom said on Wednesday evening.

He had 14 days to appeal the ruling.

Hanekom said Malema showed a "lack of remorse" as well as disrespect for the ANC's constitution, which demanded that discipline be enforced without exception.

Malema was found guilty of portraying the ANC government and its leadership under President Jacob Zuma in a negative light, and for statements about creating regime change in Botswana. He was further found guilty of propagating racism or political intolerance for his utterances at an election rally in Kimberley in May last year.

The World Bank said on Wednesday that developing countries appear to have already met a United Nations goal to halve extreme poverty in the world's poorest countries by 2015, thanks mainly to China's economic boom.

The Washington-based development lender said preliminary data showed developing countries as a group reached the goal – the first of eight UN Millennium Development Goals – in 2010.

The goals are a set of targets adopted by world leaders at the United Nations in 2000 to fight poverty, hunger and disease in poor countries.

Egypt's state election committee said the landmark presidential election will be held over two days starting May 23, as the country's military rulers prepare to hand power to civilians after last year's overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.

A run-off between the top two contenders will take place on June 16 and 17 if no candidate wins outright in the first round, and final results will be released on June 21, the committee's head, Farouk Soltan, told reporters.

The military has faced street protests and widespread demands that it hand power to civilians sooner than the end-of-June deadline it had set itself and intense speculation has surrounded the date of the vote.

Also making headlines:

Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade has won 34.8% of the vote in the presidential election, falling short of the absolute majority needed to avoid a run-off.

South Africa’s National Treasury admits that determining the correct rate for a carbon tax in the country is a fine balancing act.

And, South Africa’s beneficiation policy discussions were currently too narrowly framed and should be broadened to recognise the inextricable link between the exploitation of the country’s high-quality mineral resources and the desire to stimulate a reindustrialisaiton of the economy.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.