February 21, 2014
From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Megan van Wyngaardt.
Making headlines:

Eskom lifts its power emergency, with moves to boost the reserve margin.

Violent clashes continue in Ukraine, with the death toll rising.

And, a Ugandan gay activist is freed from detention.

State-owned power utility Eskom lifted the power emergency at 9 pm last night, after industrial customers reduced their loads by 10% earlier in the day and commercial and residential customers responded with 200 MW of savings.

Eskom said the system remained constrained, but stable, allowing all industrial customers to return to full production.

CEO Brain Dames said the emergency was declared after the power system became severely constrained, owing to the loss of additional generating units from its power-station fleet, reduced imports and the extensive use of emergency reserves.

Dames stressed that the emergency helped protect the national electricity grid and prevented rotational load shedding.

Ukraine witnessed the deadliest day on Thursday in almost three months of anti-government demonstrations, as more people were killed after violent street clashes between protesters and riot police erupted anew despite a truce announced by the country's president.

Government snipers fired at protesters who advanced on police lines in central Kiev, killing at least 70 people and wounding hundreds of others, according to opposition medics.

Meanwhile, the Kiev City Administration, without giving a breakdown, said 67 people have been killed in three days of violence since Tuesday. There was no way to immediately verify any of the death tolls.

 

South African authorities on Thursday released a gay Ugandan activist after four days in custody, following an outcry
from rights groups that he would be targeted if deported home.

Immigration officials had barred Paul Semugoma, a medical doctor and critic of pending anti-gay legislation in Uganda, from re-entering South Africa on Monday due to a lapsed visitor's visa.

Semugoma was freed after a court settlement between his legal team and the department of Home Affairs granting him a work permit and allowing him into the country.

Uganda's parliament in December passed a controversial anti-gay law that will see homosexuals jailed for life, which President Yoweri Museveni has said he will sign into law.

 

Also making headlines:

Explosions rocked five polling stations in eastern Libya on Thursday as voters began electing a body to draft a new constitution.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appealed to the international community to send an additional 3 000 troops and police to Central African Republic to combat worsening sectarian violence until a likely UN peacekeeping force is established.

And, US Ambassador Patrick Gaspard has urged the South African government to take heed of growing appeals from sections of American business for a levelling of the trade playing field ahead of upcoming deliberations on the extension of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act beyond its September 2015 expiry date.

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.