A crowd burned a church compound on Friday in one of Africa’s largest slums after a long-running land dispute flared into violence, witnesses and police said. Nobody was injured. Police said there was a dispute between the local Nubian community, which is mainly Muslim, and the Presbyterian Church over land ownership.
Peruvian rescue teams scrambled on Friday to find survivors in the disaster zone of a powerful earthquake that killed about 500 people and where an aftershock of 6,0 magnitude struck on Friday, the United States Geological Survey and witnesses said. The main quake of 8,0 magnitude hit on Wednesday.
Fires that engulfed five Mpumalanga municipalities, killing an old man and injuring a number of others, have been extinguished, the Department of Local Government and Housing said on Friday. Mopping-up operations were under way at the Mbombela, Albert Luthuli, Emakhazeni, Umjindi and Bushbuckridge municipalities.
Fervent efforts are being made by Nkosinathi Joyi’s camp to prevent the International Boxing Organisation (IBO) from stripping him of his mini-flyweight title — this after reports emerged that the IBO was on the verge of relieving the unbeaten East London fighter of the title for failing to defend it since winning it in November last year.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK: Shaun de Waal reviews the latest movie to become a stage musical to be then translated back to film in musical form, Hairspray
The BBC said on Friday its Russian-language FM broadcasts have been taken off the air by its Moscow distributor, which said its programmes were ”foreign propaganda”. The decision leaves the BBC’s Russian-language services available only on medium and shortwave broadcasts, the BBC said in a press release.
The JSE recorded the highest number of trades and highest value of trades in its 120-year existence this week, the company said on Friday. The latest records came after strong revenue growth recorded for the JSE for the interim six months to June 30 this year, in which record volumes were recorded in the exchange’s main three markets.
The fear of communism coming to South Africa justified committing acts during the apartheid era, which he has subsequently admitted were wrong, former police minister Adriaan Vlok said in Pretoria on Friday. ”We believed we were fighting a very, very bad enemy,” he said at a press conference at the end of the court case against him and four others.
Communist authorities have banned most state media from reporting on the deadly collapse of a bridge in southern China, with local officials punching and chasing reporters from the scene, reporters said on Friday. The harassment and the reporting ban, issued by the Central Propaganda Department, came on Thursday.
Despite Airports Company South Africa’s excellent annual results, airline passengers are still going to be hit with increased fees, the Board of Airline Representatives of South Africa said on Friday. Airlines have no choice but to incorporate increased airport tariffs into the price of their tickets.