Monday June 20, 2011

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

Making headlines:

South African employers are reporting “cautious” third-quarter hiring intentions, according to the latest 'Manpower Employment Outlook Survey', with hiring expectations “stuck in low gear”, Manpower South Africa MD Peter Winn said. Globally, employment was expected to increase, in varying degrees, over the next three months, which was indicative of emerging markets continuing their optimism, CEO and chairperson Jeffrey Joerres stated. South Africa’s net employment outlook increased by three percentage points, which Winn said was the weakest level since 2006. However, “modest” job growth was expected over the next three months.

Several thousand people marched through Morocco's biggest city on Sunday to protest that constitutional reforms unveiled this week by King Mohammed have not gone far enough. After some of the biggest protests in decades – inspired in part by the "Arab Spring" uprisings – the monarch announced that he would devolve some of his powers to Parliament and the government and put the reforms to a referendum on July 1. Under the changes, the King would retain his hold on security, the army and religion. That disappointed some opponents who had wanted to see the monarch hand over all his executive powers to elected officials.

Nato has admitted it destroyed a house in Tripoli in which Libyan officials said nine civilians were killed, an incident likely to sow new doubts inside the alliance about its mission in Libya. The air strike was the clearest case yet of Nato bombing causing multiple civilian casualties, and comes at a time when the organisation is already under strain from a campaign that is taking more time and resources than it expected. A Nato statement said a military missile site was the intended target of the air strikes but that it appeared one of the weapons did not strike that target.

Also making headlines:
Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf said he backed delaying a Parliamentary election which the well-organised Islamists are widely expected to dominate.
And, satellite images showed the north Sudanese military massing in the Southern Kordofan border state, a monitor said, and rebels in Darfur accused Khartoum of attacking them with military vehicles and warplanes on Sunday.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.