After a series of about-turns, the justice ministry on Thursday afternoon abandoned its attempt to embargo the news that former security police officer Gideon Nieuwoudt has been refused amnesty. Nieuwoudt, who died of cancer in August, applied for amnesty for his role in the 1989 Motherwell car-bomb killing.

Controversial Christian evangelist Peter Hammond confirmed on Wednesday that he has been charged with assault following what he said was a Halloween ”accident” with a paintball gun. ”It was meant to be a joke: nobody was meant to get hurt,” he said. ”I laid down a few ground rules: we were just going for teenagers, no kids.”

The threat of an al-Qaeda bioterrorism attack was a ”clear and present danger of the highest order”, secretary general of international policing organisation Interpol Ronald Noble said on Monday. He was speaking in Cape Town at the opening of an Interpol-organised workshop for African police departments on bioterrorism — an attack using biological weapons such as anthrax, smallpox or plague.

Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel’s bid to sequestrate arms-deal critic Terry Crawford-Browne was rejected by a Cape High Court judge on Wednesday. Manuel was seeking to recover almost R1-million in legal fees incurred by the state in fighting a series of court challenges by Crawford-Browne to the multibillion-rand deal.

The serving and former MPs facing the music in Travelgate, the parliamentary travel-scam case, on Friday received a provisional indictment that details fraud and alternative theft charges totalling about R24-million. At the same time, a Cape Town magistrate turned up the heat on the Scorpions to finalise their preparation for the case.