JOHANNESBURG/WARSAW, Feb 16 (Reuters) – Shares in
Polish paper maker Mondi Swiecie climbed above an
offer price from its South African parent on Thursday, as
investors bet Mondi Ltd would have to sweeten its $374
million buy-out bid.

The South African paper maker owns two-thirds of Mondi
Swiecie, whose products are used to make items including paper
bags, and offered 69 zlotys ($21.5) per share for the remaining
34 percent of the Polish company.

RUSTENBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, Feb 16 (Reuters) – Thousands
of protesting miners burnt tyres and torched a police office
near Impala Platinum’s Rustenburg mine in South Africa
on Thursday, as a month-long strike at the world’s
second-largest producer of the precious metal turned violent.

Police said a miner died of injuries after being beaten
during an overnight demonstration. Up to 5,000 miners blocked
the road leading to the mine and hurled stones at police,
provincial police spokeswoman Adele Myburg said.

JOHANNESBURG, Feb 8 (Reuters) – South African paper
maker Sappi posted a slight rise in first-quarter
earnings on Wednesday, lifted by lower input prices and
aggressive cost cuts, and said it expected more improvement
ahead.

As the paper industry struggles to recover from a slump
caused by anaemic demand and overcapacity, Sappi has closed
mills and is targeting higher-margin businesses such as chemical
cellulose, a move analysts say is finally showing results.

JOHANNESBURG, Feb 7 (Reuters) – ArcelorMittal South
Africa slid into a full-year loss on the back of higher
raw material costs, lower output and weaker sales and warned
that a pick-up in demand from key construction industry
customers has yet to materialise.

Chief Executive Nonkululeko Nyembezi-Heita said restocking
and lower input prices would bring a significant turnaround in
earnings for the first three months of 2012 compared with the
previous quarter but the outlook was challenging.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – The United States has been working with oil producers to ensure global supplies flow smoothly and ease concerns about a cut-off of crude from Iran, which faces tougher sanctions for its suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons, a senior official said on Tuesday.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman also said Washington had been in talks with all oil importers to find alternatives to Iranian supply and would work to avoid any price shocks.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South African logistics group Transnet and Swaziland Railways have agreed to build a new rail line via Swaziland that would ease congestion on a main coal export line and boost trade in the region, the companies said on Thursday.

The total project, estimated to cost up to 17 billion rand, includes the construction of a new 146 km (90 mile) rail line from Lothair in South Africa to Sidvokodvo in Swaziland and upgrades to existing infrastructure linking the new line with ports in South Africa and Mozambique.

KABUL (Reuters) – Only one in three Afghans has access to electricity despite years of spending to improve supply, and the country is still far too dependent on imported power, the head of the country’s state owned power utility told Reuters.

Abdul Razique Samadi, the chief executive officer at Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS), said the situation in the capital, Kabul, is far better than the rest of the country, with around 70 percent of households connected.

KABUL (Reuters) – Teenage Afghan sisters Shabnam and Sadaf Rahimi are taking the fight for women’s rights more literally than most of their peers, throwing punches in a ring as members of their country’s first team of female boxers.

They practice inside a spartan gym with broken mirrors, flaking paint, four punching bags, and a concrete floor padded with faded pink and green mats. Some girls wear face masks to keep away the dust coming up from the floor.

KABUL (Reuters) – Teenage Afghan sisters Shabnam and Sadaf Rahimi are taking the fight for women’s rights more literally than most of their peers, throwing punches in a ring as members of their country’s first team of female boxers.

They practice inside a spartan gym with broken mirrors, flaking paint, four punching bags, and a concrete floor padded with faded pink and green mats. Some girls wear face masks to keep away the dust coming up from the floor.

KABUL (Reuters) – More Afghans will go hungry next year and may be dependent on food aid for longer as school feeding programmes and projects to develop the country’s crumbling agriculture sector have to be trimmed due to waning donor support, the United Nations warned.

The UN’s World Food Programme WFP.L raised only about half its annual $400 million Afghanistan budget in 2011, and even less was expected for 2012, Bradley Guerrant, the agency’s deputy director for Afghanistan, said this week.