The National Council Against Smoking (NCAS) has welcomed a landmark United States court finding that the tobacco industry has lied for decades about the harmful effects of smoking in order to protect its profits. NCAS director Dr Yussuf Saloojee said the judgement had exposed the ”rotten core” at the heart of the tobacco industry.
South Africa’s ruling African National Congress has condemned the ”deplorable behaviour” and what it described as ”abusive utterances” of members of the HIV/Aids lobbyist group, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) at the Aids conference in Toronto, Canada.
The Gautrain Rapid Rail link will be ready for the 2010 Soccer World Cup, Minister of Transport Jeff Radebe said on Friday. Notwithstanding utterances from some involved that it will not be ready and delays on the project, Radebe said he believed Gautrain will be moving come the Soccer World Cup.
German investigators said on Friday they suspected that homemade bombs found on two trains last month were a failed terror attack. It was first thought that the devices packed into cases in trains in the western cities of Dortmund and Koblenz on July 31 were a blackmail attempt, but analysis of the contents has revealed a possible link to Lebanon.
The Pietermaritzburg High Court on Friday ordered two camps within the National Democratic Convention (Nadeco) party to hold an inaugural federal congress to choose the party’s office bearers. Legal representatives of the Assan Mbatha and Ziba Jiyane camps said they hoped the congress will resolve disputes between the camps.
The remaining two of 11 suspects initially implicated in the murders of actor Brett Goldin and fashion developer Richard Bloom were on Friday remanded to November 3 in the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court in Cape Town. Clinton Davids (22) and Shavaan Marlie (25) appeared briefly in court and were remanded in custody.
The death toll in China from Typhoon Saomai rose by 106 to 436 on Friday with the confirmation of dozens more deaths in the eastern province of Zhejiang, state media said. All 106 new fatalities were in the coastal province of Zhejiang, which had previously reported 87 dead and 52 missing, Xinhua news agency said.
Forty-four Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) members who occupied provincial government offices in Cape Town on Friday to call for the arrest of Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang were themselves arrested. The protesters, who included TAC chairperson Zackie Achmat, were charged with trespassing and warned to appear in court on Tuesday.
Now that I have read Pearlie Joubert’s article (”Paedophile priests’ victims slam Napier,” August 11) I understand the reason for her message saying she wanted to give me a chance to defend myself. Her next message — that she was not threatening me in any way — was quite incomprehensible, as I had not seen or heard what she had to say. Why was I to defend myself when I did not even know I was under attack?
Rwanda plans to strike capital punishment for genocide suspects from its statute books to encourage European and North American countries to extradite suspected masterminds of the 1994 genocide, the attorney general said on Friday. Rwanda has demanded that Western nations extradite genocide suspects, but some nations have expressed reservations because of the death penalty.