A tornado hit downtown Atlanta on Friday night, causing several injuries and damaging buildings, including the roof of the Georgia Dome where thousands were watching a college basketball game, police and witnesses said. Nine people were taken to hospitals, one in serious condition, as a result of the heavy storm, police said.
China set a ”surrender deadline”, listed deaths and showed the first extensive television footage of rioting in Lhasa on Saturday, signalling a crackdown after the worst unrest in Tibet for two decades. Sources suggested China’s official death toll of 10, just months before the Beijing Olympics, may not tell the full story.
Former bouncer Jonathan Street was convicted of murder and attempted murder by the Johannesburg High Court on Friday. He is to be sentenced on March 26. Judge Nico Coetzee found that Street shot and killed Kyle Norris (18) in the Max-X club in Edenvale on the East Rand on November 19 2006.
Two men who shot and killed a two-year-old baby during a house robbery last year were sentenced to life imprisonment plus 20 years by the Johannesburg High Court on Friday, police said. Steve Hlongwane (18) and George Nyangale (22) broke into a house in Lyndhurst on April 12 last year.
The African National Congress’s (ANC) national executive committee (NEC) was locked behind closed doors on Friday at its second meeting since the Polokwane national conference in December, media reports said. The aim was to rid the party of internal wrangles simmering since its policy conference.
Racial tension within Mpumalanga police stations has reached ”ugly” proportions, says the province’s safety and security minister, Fish Mahlalela. ”The tension between black and white officers at police stations is ugly and dents … the fight against crime,” he told a meeting on Thursday.
The 2010 World Cup soccer tournament is a prime target for corruption, editors were told in Johannesburg on Friday. ”There is a real fear that South Africa, in the staging of the World Cup, could look bad in the eyes of the world because of the dangers of corruption,” said Professor Danny Titus, of Transparency International.
A two-year-old boy whose genitals were badly mutilated was left without medical attention for about an hour at the Kagiso police station on the West Rand, media reports said on Friday. Police said they could not transport him to a hospital because of service policy, and a member of the public took him there instead.
The government and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) should bury the hatchet and unite in the fight against HIV/Aids, African National Congress (ANC) national executive committee member Zweli Mkhize told delegates at the TAC’s fourth national congress on Friday.
South Africa’s expanding economy and the widening gap left by experienced toolmakers who have left the industry have resulted in a dire need for students in this field.