Two striking municipal workers were wounded when Ekurhuleni metro police fired shots in Boksburg and four others were shot in clashes with security guards in Kempton Park on Tuesday. Police Captain Mack Mngomezulu said about 300 workers had been picketing outside the Boksburg municipality when police opened fire.
Gunmen holding a Dutch ship in northern Somalia demanded a ,1-million ransom for the vessel on Tuesday, a day after the United Nations Security Council gave countries the right to combat piracy off the Somali coastline. The MV Amiya Scan, managed by the Dutch Reider Shipping BV, was hijacked by Somali pirates on May 27.
A Zimbabwean court sentenced three South Africans to jail terms of between six and seven-and-a-half months after they were found in possession of ”illegal transmitting equipment” belonging to the Sky television channel, Sky said on Tuesday.
Max Mosley will remain president of Formula One’s governing body, the FIA, after winning a vote of confidence on Tuesday from its members following his involvement in a sado-masochist sex scandal. FIA announced that Mosley had won 103 of 169 votes cast during an extraordinary general assembly at FIA headquarters in Paris.
The leader of a rebel faction of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party was freed on bail on Tuesday after his arrest over a written attack on President Robert Mugabe. A Harare court ordered Arthur Mutambara, head of a splinter faction of the Movement for Democratic Change, to pay Z-billion (about ) and report to police each Friday.
Andrew Jordaan took seven-year-old Sheldean Human to isolated bushes 500m from his home in a ”premeditated manner” to sexually assault and murder her, the Pretoria High Court found on Tuesday. Acting Judge Chris Eksteen rejected Jordaan’s version of what happened on February 18 2007 when Sheldean disappeared, calling him ”a blatant liar”.
The procedures of appointing the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) board are to be reviewed, Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri said on Tuesday. Speaking in the National Assembly she said there had been a national debate about the SABC as a result of views that emerged out of the assembly’s communications committee hearings.
A New York-based human rights watchdog urged China on Tuesday to honour its commitment to improve its rights record before the Beijing Olympics by freeing some 130 Tiananmen-era prisoners. Human Rights Watch made the call on the eve of the 19th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army’s crushing of student-led demonstrations.
Ernie Els says he needs to work on his mental game ahead of the United States Open which tees off on June 12 at Torrey Pines in California. After missing consecutive cuts in his last two outings, Els has opted not to play in this week’s Stanford St Jude Championship in Memphis to concentrate on his preparation.
A happily married couple in northern India got the shock of their lives when they learnt they had divorced 10 years ago, the Times of India reported on Tuesday. Meena Verma, a mother of two children, tried to file a case against her in-laws for violence, only to be told by a court in Haryana state that she had been divorced for a decade.