A Randfontein butcher and two employees were locked in a freezer in an armed robbery on Monday, West Rand police said. Inspector Solomon Sibiya said Fat Belly butchery had just opened when three armed men entered. The three men locked the owner and two employees in a freezer at the back of the shop.
Uganda’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army on Monday said it will resume peace talks with the government, but sought a break to mourn its third-in-command, killed by the army over the weekend, officials said. The government welcomed the decision by the rebels, who last Wednesday stormed out of the talks being held in southern Sudan.
The JSE was in positive territory just before midday on Monday as the market discounted a positive opening in the United States. London-listed resources group Anglo American led the way, despite higher commodity prices. By 11.55am, the all-share and all-share industrial indices added 0,8% and 0,91% respectively.
The Beijing Olympics will lead to a boom in sales of flat-screen televisions in China, with one in four televisions sold in 2008 either a liquid-crystal display (LCD) or plasma, a Japanese study said on Monday. Only 10% of the 42-million colour televisions sold in China last year was an LCD or plasma, said a study by the economic research firm Fuji Keizai.
All-rounder Mashrafee Mortaza was the star for Bangladesh as they beat Kenya by two wickets on Sunday to win the one-day series 2-0. Having taken 3-53 in the Kenyan innings, the stylish left-hander returned to hit the winning runs that helped Bangladesh hold off a resurgent Kenyan side buoyed by a tight pace-bowling attack.
Empirical evidence suggests that gun control is a ”total failure” in curbing crime, the organisation Gun Owners of South Africa (Gosa) said on Monday. ”It creates a community where only the government, which is then free to abuse its power … and criminals own firearms,” said Gosa coordinator Charl van Wyk.
Somalia’s dominant Islamic militia on Sunday seized control of a central township near the coastline that has been a base of piracy and dozens of hijackings of ships in the Indian Ocean, officials and residents said. ”The Islamic courts are in full control of Haradere,” Sheikh Said Ali, an Islamic courts official, said of the township.
Gun battles erupted in multiple locations in southern Nigeria’s oil hub of Port Harcourt on Sunday night, and witnesses said a group of foreigners was taken hostage from a nightclub amid the shooting. A witness said he saw more than 10 people go into the nightclub and drag a group of foreigners away while shooting into the air.
<b>CDS OF THE WEEK:</b> Take a song and make it your own by not respecting the original too much and breathing new life into it, and you will succeed, writes Lloyd Gedye.
Traditional playground games such as cowboys and Indians in the heart of the United States’s old wild west are facing high noon after a proposal to outlaw toy guns. Alarmed by rising gun crime in Dallas, named the most dangerous city in the US by the FBI, councillors have advanced a plan to ban replica firearms.