Monday March 12, 2012

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Brad Dubbelman

Making headlines:

ANC youth league rebel Julius Malema pleaded for the ruling party not to expel him and made a rare public apology to the movement's senior leadership which he has frequently criticised as too moderate in their policies. Malema confirmed he would appeal against the ANC decision last month to expel him on charges of sowing divisions within its ranks, which he denies. Striking an unusually contrite figure in an interview broadcast on State TV, the suspended youth league leader insisted he had done nothing wrong by calling for nationalisation of mines and the seizure of white-owned land in South Africa, the world's biggest producer of platinum.

Egypt's Foreign Minister condemned Israel's air strikes on Gaza on Saturday and called for an immediate end to the attacks to prevent further bloodshed, the State news agency MENA said. Israel killed four Gaza militants, raising the death toll in two days of violence to 14 and dozens of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel injured at least four people. After weeks of relative calm, violence along the Israeli-Gaza frontier escalated when Israel blew up a car in Gaza City, killing two militant leaders. Israel said one of the militants killed had been involved in plotting a cross-border attack from Egypt.

The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) has revised lower Eskom's power tariff increases for the period April 1, 2012, to March 31, 2013, from the 25.9% approved previously to 16%. In addition, Eskom and the Department of Public Enterprises indicated at the weekend that they would be moving to smooth the transition to cost-reflective power tariffs over a longer period and that they might, thus, request Nersa to offer pricing certainty over a longer period that the three years currently provided by the price-setting model. The surprise adjustment to the 2012/13 rates was made after the utility proposed that the average price increase for the period be lowered by 9.9 percentage points.

Also making headlines:

Candidates in what is being billed as the first free presidential election in Egypt's history were given their first chance to register on Saturday, more than a year after Hosni Mubarak was ousted from office.

And, economist Tony Twine has died after a short illness.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.