October 22, 2013.
From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Motshabi Hoaeane.
Making headlines:

A besieged Syrian town pleads for help in an open-letter.

NATO is expected to advise Libya on strengthening its security forces.

And, the South African Revenue Service says tax revenue has recovered since the 2008 crisis.


Residents of a Syrian town besieged by President Bashar al-Assad's forces appealed to the world to "save them from death" in an open letter describing desperate conditions and suffering. The letter was distributed by the opposition Syrian National Council (or SNC) on Monday.

Hundreds of men, women and children in Mouadamiya had died and thousands had been wounded, the residents said.

Mouadamiya, on the southwest outskirts of the capital Damascus, was occupied by anti-Assad rebels last year and the government has been trying to win it back since then. "For nearly one year, the city of Mouadamiya has been under siege with no access to food, electricity, medicine, communications and fuel," said the letter.

The writers, who did not give their names, said they had managed to find enough power to run a computer and connect to the Internet to send the letter. The SNC said nearly 12 000 people face starvation and death in Mouadamiya. About 90% of Mouadamiya has been destroyed, few doctors remained and residents were eating "leaves of trees."

NATO agreed on Monday to a Libyan request to advise it on strengthening its security forces, lending support to a country where powerful militias have stoked fears of a slide into anarchy.

Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan asked NATO for technical advice and help with training in May and the alliance later sent experts to the country to see how it could help. The request for help was given added urgency by Zeidan's brief kidnapping by militia members this month.

Two years after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in an Arab Spring-inspired uprising, Libya's fragile government is crippled by infighting and unable to disarm former militia fighters in a country awash with weapons from his four-decade rule.

NATO said in a statement that allies had agreed to respond positively to the request for NATO to provide advice on defence institution-building in Libya. The 28-nation alliance said it would set up a "small advisory team" to help Libya.

 

South African Revenue Service’s (or Sars) head of revenue analysis Randall Carolissen said on Monday that despite concerns over lagging company income tax, South Africa’s tax revenue had recovered following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, growing at 6.8% between 2008/9 and 2012/13.

Speaking during the release in Parliament of Sars’ sixth annual tax statistics edition, Carolissen said all the country’s tax types – with the exception of company income tax (CIT) – had rebounded strongly since the country’s 2009 recession.

Though performance in the country’s tax income was still short of the pre-crisis period between 2004/5 and 2007/8 when tax revenue grew by 17.3%, he stressed that the decline in tax revenue during the recession (contracting by 4.2% in 2009/10 over 2008/9) was not as dramatic as that of developing economies, which pointed to the resilience of the country’s tax system.

Also making headlines:

Business Unity South Africa says the ‘right’ budget messages from the upcoming Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement could prevent ratings downgrades.

Solar PV-focused power firm SonnedixBusiness has earmarked South Africa as a core future investment destination for both projects and acquisitions.
 

And, the Department of Higher Education and Training says plans are well advanced to ensure that two new universities – Sol Plaatje University in the Northern Cape and the University of Mpumalanga – are ready for their first student intake in 2014.
 

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.