Former South African president Nelson Mandela looks on as he celebrates his birthday at his house in Qunu, Eastern Cape July 18, 2012.

JOHANNESBURG | Thu Dec 27, 2012 1:31am EST

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Former South African President Nelson Mandela is doing well after being discharged from hospital, although he is still not fully recovered, a government spokesman said on Thursday.

"He is not yet fully recovered, but he has sufficiently moved forward so that he can be discharged," Mac Maharaj told local broadcaster eNCA.

"He is sufficiently well to be home."

The 94-year-old anti-apartheid leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, ending a nearly three-week stay during which he was treated for a lung infection and had surgery to remove gallstones.

Mandela, who has been in frail health for several years, is now receiving care at his suburban Johannesburg home.

Mandela has a history of lung problems dating back to when he contracted tuberculosis while in jail as a political prisoner. He spent 27 years in prison, including 18 years on the windswept Robben Island off Cape Town.

The former president was admitted to a Pretoria hospital on December 8 and this was his longest stay in a hospital since he was released from prison in 1990.

Current President Jacob Zuma visited Mandela on Christmas Day and said the former South African leader was doing much better, making progress and in good spirits.

Mandela was also admitted to a hospital in February because of abdominal pain but released the following day after a keyhole examination showed there was nothing seriously wrong with him.

He has spent most of his time since then in another home in Qunu, his ancestral village in the impoverished Eastern Cape province.

(Reporting by David Dolan; editing by Todd Eastham)

View the original article here

* Says no discussions taking place on nationalisation

* Move would have put UK's AAA rating at risk - analysts

* RBS braced for mis-selling IT provisions - Sky News

By Matt Scuffham

LONDON, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Britain has no plans to fully nationalise Royal Bank of Scotland, government sources told Reuters on Thursday, contradicting a report in the Financial Times.

The FT said senior government ministers were discussing the possibility of buying out private investors in the bank but sources told Reuters such a move was not on the agenda.

"There is no discussion on the table, there is no proposal, it is just not an active thing we are discussing at the moment at all," one of the sources said.

Mediobanca analysts said a full nationalisation would increase Britain's debt burden in relation to GDP and almost certainly cost the country its AAA credit rating.

"Having seen the taxpayer already suffer through the rescue of RBS, to saddle them with a book of questionable loans in the interests of political expediency is quite frankly ludicrous," they said in a research note.

Britain already owns 82 percent of the bank after bailing it out during the 2008 financial crisis. The remaining 18 percent of the bank is owned by private investors and would need to be bought out at a premium to the current market price. The shares are worth 4.2 billion pounds at Wednesday's closing price.

The FT report said ministers had become exasperated by the barriers they believe banks are placing on lending and some think taking full control of RBS and forcing it to lend could push other banks into action.

The government is under increasing pressure to stimulate the economy which official data has shown to be in a much deeper recession than previously thought.

The latest programme to get banks lending was launched on Wednesday offering banks 80 billion pounds worth of cheap funding on condition they lend it to small firms and households.

RBS reports first-half results on Friday.

Sky News reported that the bank will set aside a further 130 million pounds to compensate customers mis-sold loan insurance, take a hit of 125 million pounds for problems related to a computer systems failure and make a provision of 50 million pounds to settle claims by small firms wrongly sold interest rate hedging products.

View the original article here