November 12, 2010

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Brad Dubbelman.

Making headlines:

Democratic Alliance (DA) Minister of Parliament David Maynier was ordered out of the National Assembly on Thursday, after refusing to withdraw a statement in which he accused Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu of "telling a big political fib" to Parliament.
Maynier, who has taken to using members' statement time in the House to call on Sisulu to release interim reports of the national defence force service commission, earlier questioned the reasons given by the Defence Minister for not doing so. On a point of order from Deputy Basic Education Minister Enver Surty, who questioned whether it was possible to "attack the integrity of a member of this House without bringing about a substantive motion", Speaker Max Sisulu said that Maynier's accusations were tantamount to saying that the Minister lied to Parliament - "a serious charge, and one that is definitely un-Parliamentary, and in this case, without any substantive motion."
DA chief whip Ian Davidson said that the party stands fully behind Maynier and his statement. "It is Minister Lindiwe Sisulu's behaviour that is un-Parliamentary, and warrants rebuke," he said.

Iran's Foreign Minister flew to Nigeria on Thursday to discuss an arms shipment seized in the West African State last month, which diplomats have said could put Tehran in breach of United Nations (UN) sanctions. Nigeria's Foreign Minister said that his Iranian counterpart had pledged to cooperate with investigations into the shipment, intercepted by Nigeria's secret service two weeks ago and found to contain rockets and other explosives.
Diplomats in New York said that Iran would appear to be in breach of the UN sanctions regime, which forbids it from exporting any kind of weapons directly or indirectly, if the seized weapons were originally loaded on its territory. But they said that it was difficult to assess the case because Nigeria had not yet notified the UN Security Council's Iran sanctions committee about the seizure.
Nigeria's secret service said that it had been monitoring the movement of the illegal cargo before it entered Lagos, one of Africa's busiest ports, in July, and that there was no question that Nigeria was the intended destination.

The Bureau for Economic Research (BER) on Thursday revised its average rand forecast for the fourth quarter from R8,45 to the dollar, to R7,50 and added that the current drivers of rand strength could persist for "some time". These drivers include large foreign capital flows into emerging markets and sustained weakness of the dollar.
So far this year, South Africa has attracted "unprecedented" foreign inflows into the bond market. Nevertheless, the BER has left its rand/dollar exchange rate projections for the fourth quarter of 2012 unchanged at R8 to the dollar, saying that the rand is likely to weaken again as interest rates in advanced economies start to rise and capital inflows to emerging markets start reducing.
The BER expects South Africa's gross domestic product growth to remain below 4% up to 2012, amid a still fragile global economic recovery.

Also making headlines:

Agri SA says that South Africa could reach agreement on a land deal with the Republic of Congo soon, part of Congo's plan to improve food security by allowing foreign farmers to lease land.
Guinean electoral officials have released results from about 40% of ballots cast in its Presidential runoff, showing Cellou Dallein Diallo with a small lead over his rival Alpha Conde.
Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies says that South Africa needs to become "much more energetic" in combating fronting in black economic-empowerment deals.
And, north and south Sudan's defence chiefs vow that there will be no return to war in a rare joint statement that set out to defuse tensions in the countdown to a referendum on southern secession.

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.