A South African grandmother was jailed for nearly eight and a half years on Tuesday after being caught trying to smuggle cocaine hidden in garden gnomes into New Zealand. Linda Martin (52) was sentenced in the Auckland High Court, after being caught with more than three kilograms of cocaine at Auckland Airport two years ago.
Cape Town city manager Wallace Mgoqi on Monday evening brushed aside a council decision to terminate his contract, saying he will be in the office as usual on Tuesday. A full council meeting on Monday morning resolved to revoke former mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo’s decision to extend Mgoqi’s contract for a year.
Air Force One, the presidential jet, is a near-mythical symbol of United States power, shrouded in so much secrecy that even foreign leaders invited on board are forbidden from seeing every corner. But the aircraft just became rather less mysterious after it emerged that detailed plans of its interior and exterior had been made publicly available on the website of an American air force base.
President Jacques Chirac caved in yesterday to France’s biggest street protests for decades and scrapped the controversial new youth employment law, handing a victory to the unions and a blow to his Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin. Chirac was desperate for a way out of France’s two-month political crisis which has seen millions march, students blockade schools and universities, and protesters occupy the Sorbonne for the first time since 1968.
Lies, and lies within lies, were the topic of the day as the LeisureNet trial entered its second week in the Cape High Court on Monday. The liquidated group’s former in-house architect Dawid Rabie was being cross-examined on his evidence that joint chief executives Peter Gardener and Rodney Mitchell pressured him into handing over  000 in kickbacks.
Jeffrey Skilling, Enron’s former chief executive, on Monday made an impassioned vow to fight the criminal fraud charges levelled against him ”until the day I die”. Skilling (52) took the witness stand for the first time at a court in Houston, Texas, to defend himself in one of the most infamous cases of corporate chicanery ever to come to light.
Sir Richard Branson realised his dream of getting into broadcast television this week as he sold Virgin Mobile to NTL — netting his empire almost £700million in cash and shares — and licensed the use of the Virgin brand across the new company’s TV, broadband and telecoms services.
The overall award for the Mondi Shanduka Journalist of the Year went to cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro – or Zapiro. This should spark some debate in the media industry about whether or not the definition of a journalist is broad enough to include a cartoonist; and whether cartoonists and journalists fulfil the same role.<
Recently, the United Nations General Assembly voted to abolish its discredited Human Rights Commission and replace it with a stronger Human Rights Council. Whether the council lives up to its promise depends on the political will of governments as they elect the first members of the new body.
Silvio Berlusconi is as famous for being a media magnate as he is for being Italy’s Prime Minister, and his final TV debate with Romano Prodi before the general election turned out to be a political version of It’s a Knockout — though without a clear result. The Forza Italia leader was deemed to have done marginally better than in the previous round against his rival from the centre-left alliance.