India's Kingfisher Airlines halts flights for another week
Financial difficulties for Kingfisher Airlines, once India’s second largest airline, look set to continue after it announced late on Thursday that its fleet would remain grounded until October 12th. The move comes after management’s failure to resolve a dispute with staff over unpaid wages, and is the latest in a series of flight stoppages for the company. In July, the airline was forced to cancel 40 flights after staff went on strike, again over the airline's failure to pay months of wages. Meanwhile, the wife of a Kingfisher employee has killed herself, leaving a note blaming financial stress because her husband's salary had not been paid. Kingfisher, owned by the industrialist Vijay Mallya, has been struggling with a cash shortage and has reported losses for five years in a row. (Financial Times*, BBC, The Times of India)
South African Toyota workers end strike after pay rise
Union leaders at the Japanese car company’s Durban plant in South Africa said staff would return after being given a 5.4 percent wage increase. This week, Toyota was forced to shut its South African car factory for four days because of an illegal pay strike, the first sign that wildcat mine stoppages are spreading to other parts of Africa's biggest economy. "The circumstances are not the same as what is happening in the mines," said Mbuso Ngubane of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa. "But it does send a message. It does have an impact on other workers." (Guardian, Telegraph, Reuters)
Shell declares force majeure on fuel in South Africa
Royal Dutch Shell Plc today declared a ‘force majeure’ on fuel deliveries in South Africa's economic hub of Gauteng province, which is in the north of the country and includes Johannesburg and Pretoria, due to a two-week strike by more than 20,000 truck drivers. ‘Force majeure’ allows the company and its customers to break contracts due to situations beyond their control and its invocation is a sign of the increasing impact of the truckers' strike in South Africa, which is already under strain from a wave of wildcat walkouts by platinum, gold and iron ore miners. Near the "platinum belt" city of Rustenburg, 120 km (70 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, hundreds of protesters barricaded streets with rocks and burning tyres on Friday close to a mine belonging to Anglo American Platinum. (Reuters)
Environment
British government opens state-of-the-art power system by E.ON and the National Grid
The UK’s Energy Secretary, Ed Davey, opened a new E.ON and National Grid combined heat and power (CHP) system on Thursday. The system is designed to enhance power plant efficiency and slash carbon emissions by up to 300,000 tonnes per year. The 4.5 km heat pipe is the first system in the UK capable of harnessing waste energy from a gas-fired power station to heat millions of litres of hot water which then fuels operations at a neighbouring gas depot. As a result the depot, run by National Grid, could potentially reduce its carbon emissions by 50 percent. (Business Green)
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