A smokeless tobacco product, known as snus, is touted as being 90% less harmful than cigarettes, says a tobacco company, but anti-smoking activists aren’t convinced. Snus is finely ground moist tobacco, usually sold in small teabag-like sachets, that are placed under the upper lip against the gum.

Corruption, political violence, "godfather" politics and general impunity threaten the stability of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and the world’s sixth-largest oil producer, a 100-page report released recently by the international NGO Human Rights Watch warns.

Zehir Omar, the lawyer acting for Khalid Rashid, has applied for leave to appeal to Pretoria’s High Court. Rashid is the Pakistani whose disappearance in 2005 initiated court proceedings challenging the government’s claim that it did not facilitate an extraordinary rendition as part of the ”war on terror”. Minister of Home Affairs Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula claimed to have deported Rashid in the normal course of business.

A top legal academic has dismissed as ”a red herring” suggestions that suspended National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) Vusi Pikoli has jeopardised South Africa’s national security interests by indemnifying and plea-bargaining with criminals in exchange for their testimony.

The IFP goes to its 32nd annual general conference on Saturday to take stock of its declining fortunes and formulate a turnaround strategy to wrest back control of KwaZulu-Natal in the 2009 general elections. The conference is important for party president Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who is battling to stifle debate over the succession debacle in his party amid hushed calls by reformists in the youth wing.

One of the ANC’s historically powerful provinces, Gauteng, goes to Polokwane with diminished voting power after failed efforts to grow the party from where it was five years ago. Gauteng will be taking fewer delegates to the conference than it did in 2002, when the ANC held its elective conference in Stellenbosch.

Senior advocates are said to have discussed organising the Bar to boycott the Supreme Court while Cape Judge President John Hlophe remains in office, as demands for Hlophe’s removal continue to mount in legal and academic circles.

Storms in South Africa are going to become more severe, an analyst at the South African Weather Service has warned. And while residents in Mamelodi, Soweto, were mopping up water and clearing up the damage to their houses this week, weather man Mnikeli Ndabambi warned that people­ in low-lying areas could expect more flooding.