Former president FW de Klerk was out of intensive care following complications after a cancerous colon tumour was removed, a family spokesperson said on Wednesday. Dave Steward said De Klerk was still linked to a ventilator but was now functioning ”more than 80%” on his own lungs.
A R19-million waste-water treatment plant, which will save a thirsty Cape Town millions of litres a day, is to be commissioned in the city on Thursday. The revamped Potsdam plant will eventually supply 38-million litres of non-potable water to the Blaauwberg area, project manager Anic Smit said on Wednesday.
A United States court of appeals has struck down a lower court ruling requiring a sex offender to undergo periodic sexual-arousal testing, saying such a practice was ”Orwellian”. In its decision handed down Tuesday, the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said it could not agree with the March 2005 judgment by a Los Angeles district court.
The South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) will sign a pay agreement on Thursday with security employers, Satawu general secretary Randall Howard said. He was addressing a large number of striking security guards who had gathered at Beyers Naude Square in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
President Thabo Mbeki should take over leadership of South Africa’s National Aids Council in the face of soaring HIV/Aids mortality figures, Treatment Action Campaign chairperson Zackie Achmat said on Wednesday. He was commenting on a 2003/04 mortality report released by Statistics South Africa three weeks ago.
A Palestinian woman was killed and 14 other people, including children, were wounded on Wednesday in a fresh Israeli air strike in the southern Gaza Strip, local medical sources and witnesses said. The sources said a missile, fired by an Israeli aircraft towards a car, instead slammed into a house near the town of Khan Yunis, killing 27-year-old Fatima al-Barbarawi.
An earthquake measuring 5,5 on the Richter scale struck India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which were badly hit by the December 2004 tsunami, an official said on Wednesday. ”The intensity of the earthquake was moderate. It was recorded in the Nicobar Islands this evening,” an official at the Indian Meteorological Department said.
Vincent Sherman, who directed — and romanced — Bette Davis, Rita Hayworth and Joan Crawford during his heyday as a leading Hollywood filmmaker in the 1940s and 1950s, has died. He would have been 100 on July 16. His death at the Motion Picture and Television hospital was announced on Monday by his son, Eric Sherman.
East Rand police are closing in on a gang of 12 to 15 striking security guards believed to be responsible for the deaths of 25 of their non-striking colleagues in Gauteng since the end of March. Two of the alleged ringleaders have already been arrested, said Detective Inspector Gerry van der Merwe.
The man at the helm of Sears, Roebuck and Company when the retailer built the Chicago high-rise that bears its name has died. Arthur H Wood was 93. Wood’s signature is on the last beam used to build the Sears Tower. The country’s tallest building was completed in 1973.