Staff Reporter
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/ 5 March 2008

‘Mr Engelbrecht, you are an evil man’

Security guard Richard Engelbrecht was on Wednesday given two life sentences — one for the rape of Mitchells Plain schoolgirl Annestacia Wiese and the second for murdering her by strangulation. He was also sentenced to ten years imprisonment for indecently assaulting his three-year-old stepdaughter two years previously.

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/ 5 March 2008

High on Mount Sinai?

The Israelites may have been high on a hallucinogenic plant when Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, according to a study by an Israeli psychology professor. Benny Shanon said two plants in the Sinai desert contain the same psychoactive molecules as those found in plants from which the Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.

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/ 5 March 2008

Don’t cry no tears, FBJ tells 702

Newspaper columnist Jon Qwelane on Wednesday at a public forum organised by the South African Human Rights Commission refused to apologise for calling a former colleague a ”coconut” for objecting to a recent, blacks-only Forum of Black Journalists event. The forum discussion was frank and at times heated.

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/ 5 March 2008

Standard Bank full-year earnings up, warns on 2008

South Africa’s Standard Bank Group said on Wednesday full-year headline earnings per share rose 23,4% to R1 033,4 cents, but it warned it would take a short-term hit from its deal to sell a 20% stake to China’s biggest lender ICBC. Africa’s biggest bank by assets said normalised headline earnings per share rose 20,6%, and normalised return on equity was 24,8%.

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/ 5 March 2008

Actor killed in attempted hijacking

Actor and popular Soweto pub owner Shimmy Mofokeng was shot dead by hijackers while approaching his driveway in Leonard Lane in Mulbarton, Johannesburg police said on Wednesday. Spokesperson Captain Julia Claassen said Mofokeng (53) was shot in his upper body as he was about to drive into his yard in his white Kia kombi on Monday.

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/ 5 March 2008

The wrong page for the media

”I am shocked to learn from ‘A democracy of untouchables’ (February 8) that Independent Communications Authority of South Africa councillor Robert Nkuna was involved in drafting the African National Congress’s proposal for a print-media tribunal,” writes the Democratic Alliance’s Dene Smuts.

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/ 5 March 2008

The lunacy of bottled water

If there is one product on the supermarket shelves that is sold on packaging alone, it is bottled water. Identical in content and taste, the only real difference between competing brands is the marketing value of the label. You’d be hard pressed to differentiate between French, Belgian and British water in a blind taste test.