Seven people died in a bus accident on KwaZulu-Natal’s (KZN) South Coast on Wednesday afternoon, authorities said. Speaking earlier from the accident scene, Victor Chetty, director of protection services for the Hibiscus Coast, said six people had died at the accident in Southbroom and eight were critically injured.
Three women who confessed to the killing of a baby and burying the body in a yard abandoned their bail applications in court on Wednesday. They appeared in the Mamelodi Magistrate’s Court in Pretoria, which postponed the case to August 28. The women are 34-year-old Cecilia Mokgabane Seale, Rosinah Show, an aunt, and Thandi Martha Matubane, the midwife.
Peace talks due to start in Somalia this week were overshadowed by a grenade attack in a Mogadishu market that killed at least three people on Wednesday. The attack caused chaos at the Bakara market a day before the opening of the peace meeting, already adjourned from the weekend in a climate of violence.
The World Bank on Wednesday approved grants of -million for Malawi and Mozambique to increase the availability and reliability of low cost, environmentally friendly electricity in Southern Africa. Malawi will get -million and Mozambique -million to connect Malawi to the Southern African Power Pool through Mozambique.
Sales of Sony’s PlayStation 3 (PS3) have finally topped the one million mark in Japan eight months after its launch, lagging well behind those of Nintendo’s Wii, research showed on Wednesday. Sony had sold just over 1,01-million PS3s as of July 15 since the console’s launch in Japan on November 11, according to Enterbrain, a Japanese publisher that tracks video-game console sales.
German rider Patrick Sinkewitz, who was forced to retire from the Tour de France on Monday, has tested positive for testosterone, the German cycling federation BDR announced on Wednesday. The BDR said that T-Mobile rider Sinkewitz was caught with an elevated testosterone level at an out-of-competition test on June 8.
Zambia’s civil- and trade-union coalition on Wednesday threatened to picket a regional summit next month in Lusaka in protest over the political impasse in their country. The coalition said that it wants the summit of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) next month to discuss the country’s political impasse on the constitution-making process.
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is going to court to stop a Mail & Guardian screening of the controversial documentary Unauthorised: Thabo Mbeki in Johannesburg on Wednesday evening. An interdict application will be heard in court on Wednesday afternoon.
Scotland’s richest man pledged on Wednesday to give away his £1-billion fortune to charity to help alleviate poverty in Africa. Sir Tom Hunter plans to donate the huge amount to good causes in developing countries and in Britain during the rest of his lifetime, in one of the largest charitable donations in modern British history.
United States forces have arrested a top Iraqi militant who acted as a link between al-Qaeda’s Iraqi offshoot and Osama bin Laden, the global jihadist network’s Saudi founder, the US military said on Wednesday. Brigadier General Kevin Bergner said American troops had arrested Khaled al-Mashhadani on July 4 in the northern city of Mosul.