There is no evidence of any organised group of any sort being the agent of an act of sabotage at Koeberg — which led to the shutdown of the nuclear plant earlier this year — South Africa’s Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin told Parliament on Thursday. Erwin was speaking after months of controversy over remarks he made the day before the local government elections on March 1.
Emergency workers in south-west Ethiopia scrambled on Thursday to rescue thousands marooned by the latest in a series of deadly flash floods across the nation feared to have killed nearly 900 people. With 876 people in southern, eastern and northern Ethiopia already reported dead or missing, officials warned that the toll was likely to climb higher.
A typhoon churned toward Japan’s Pacific coast on Thursday with heavy rain and choppy waves, leaving three people, including a middle-aged surfer, dead or missing, officials said. Typhoon Wukong, which means Monkey King in Chinese, was moving slowly towards the southern main island of Kyushu, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
The case of convicted paedophile and serial murderer Sipho Dube was postponed on Thursday because his lawyer, Jesse Penton, had to attend to his ailing mother. Johannesburg High Court prosecutor Joanie Spies told the court that Penton’s mother was gravely ill in hospital and asked the matter to be postponed to next Tuesday.
Women police and metro officers handed a memorandum to Gauteng provincial minister of security Firoz Cachalia at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg on Thursday, pledging their support in the fight against crime. The event was part of Women’s Month celebrations.
The United Nations is investigating a suspected child prostitution ring involving its peacekeepers and government soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the UN mission said on Thursday. Among accusations being investigated is that pimps are using the presence of UN peacekeepers to lure vulnerable girls to go and work as prostitutes.
South African Breweries (SAB) has again warned consumers about an e-mail scan that is being widely circulated in South Africa and which promises free products from the company. SAB initially put a warning out to the public on July 20 and the e-mail has once again appeared in the public domain, SAB said in a statement on Thursday.
The economic collapse of South Africa’s neighbouring state, Zimbabwe, is stripping South Africa of economic growth of about 2% per year, yet South African President Thabo Mbeki has "handed over the baton" to others to resolve the political impasse in that country, Zimbabwe opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) policy adviser Eddie Cross said on Thursday.
South Africa is pressing ahead with a law to ban mercenaries, clouding the prospects of thousands of South Africans now fighting for foreign armies or working for security companies in Iraq. But critics say the draft law will have far-reaching consequences for South African soldiers fighting for legitimate foreign forces.
The owner of a game lodge in the Free State where two security guards were killed by lions has been charged with culpable homicide, police said on Thursday. aptain Rosa Benade said the man was taken in by local police on Thursday. ”His fingerprints were taken and a charge laid,” said Benade.