Rescuers trying to save a woman who got stuck in a tree after her house was flooded were hampered by snakes making for their jet ski, the National Sea Rescue Institute said on Thursday. ”There were lots of snakes in the flood waters. They were using the rescue gear and the jetski for floatation,” spokesperson Craig Lambinon said.
Wednesday’s talks between the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Kumba Resources failed to find a solution to the current strike action affecting the company, the union said on Thursday. "The meeting, which took the whole day, ended without offering a clear sign of an end to the deadlock," the statement added.
Australia coach John Connolly expects a more confrontational South Africa side in Sydney on Saturday than the team that was thrashed 49-0 in their first Tri-Nations encounter in Brisbane last month. With Australia licking their wounds after last week’s 13-9 loss to New Zealand resigned them to a fourth straight Bledisloe Cup defeat and further lost ground in the Tri-Nations, Connolly said the Wallabies must step up a gear.
The United States’s military top brass may have deliberately misled the 9/11 commission, painting a picture of a swift response to the unfolding terrorist attacks when, in reality, fighter jets spent crucial minutes pursuing a non-existent plane, it emerged on Wednesday.
Billionaire Dave King had already spent over R68,8-million on lawyers and there was more where that came from, the Pretoria High Court heard on Wednesday. King faces 322 charges of tax fraud, racketeering and foreign exchange contraventions laid out in an indictment of 200 000 pages.
A woman jumped off a Durban beach pier with her three-year-old son strapped to her back in an apparent suicide bid on Wednesday night. Inspector Tray Allison of the police search and rescue unit said fishermen on the Wedge Beach Pier saw the woman climb over the railings and jump into the water.
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The Presidency is considering a request from Jacob Zuma for financial assistance in his corruption trial, South African Broadcasting Corporation radio news reported on Thursday. It quoted chief operations officer Trevor Fowler as saying the matter was being discussed by lawyers.
Israeli jets pounded Hezbollah’s Beirut stronghold and troops battled the guerrillas in the south on Thursday while world powers struggled to come up with a plan to stop a war now in its fourth week. The United States, France and Britain hope for a United Nations Security Council resolution within a week that would call for a truce and perhaps beef up existing United Nations peacekeepers.
South African banking group Absa cautioned on Thursday that its headline earnings for the second half of the year could be somewhat lower than that achieved in the first six months. The group’s earnings for the first half of the year ended June were up 22,4% to R3,46-billion compared to pro forma earnings of R2,83-billion for the corresponding period of the previous financial year.
At last — leadership from President Thabo Mbeki on a crisis that, by his own admission, has gripped the ruling African National Congress for two years. He told his party’s warring factions to stop putting petty turf battles before the real work of development. He asked what ANC branches were doing to ensure the provision of decent sanitation and adequate water supplies.