Somewhere beneath the thousands of multicoloured kites that flash above the rooftops in defiance of a government ban, Rizwan Ahmed is mourning the death of his four-year-old son Shayan. ”You cannot imagine the horrible and tragic scene. My son’s throat was completely cut open,” he says from his humble home in a suburb of Lahore.
The case against three men, accused of murdering four-year-old Makgabo Matlala and gang-raping her 57-year-old nanny, was on Tuesday postponed in the Vereeniging Magistrate’s Court to March 23 for a bail hearing. All five benches at court number two were full of people from Lenasia and Vereeniging.
British male drivers waste nearly six-million hours a year on the road because they are reluctant to ask for directions, a study said on Tuesday. Men who are lost wait an average of 20 minutes before giving up and asking for directions, while women only wait 10 minutes before seeking help.
South Africans are confident that the 2010 Soccer World Cup will bring increased job opportunities and improved economic growth to the country, according to a survey conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council. Respondents also believed that the tournament would consolidate South Africa’s position in the international arena.
Syria’s internet has emerged as the vehicle for the bold voice of dissent in Damascus, where the state regularly exercises censorship and stifles domestic criticism. The electronic media has pushed the envelope of what is acceptable but at a heavy price.
There was no national energy crisis in South Africa and the contention that the recent Western Cape power outages were impacting on investment was dismissed by Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin on Tuesday. He said conjecture that South Africa had turned away an investor in a second aluminium smelter was not true.
Sony said on Tuesday it would appeal a United States court ruling that found the Japanese giant infringed on a small US firm’s patent over its hot-selling PlayStation, whose next-generation version is out this year. A US District Court threw out last week Sony’s appeal of a costly 2005 ruling that said the conglomerate illegally used technology of game machine developer Immersion.
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”Ma, I was raped,” is how Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser first broke the news of the alleged attack, the Johannesburg High Court heard on Tuesday. Unisa accountancy lecturer Nosipho ”Pinkie” Mgudlwa said she had SMS’d the alleged victim about borrowing an Indian outfit.
Convicted German confidence trickster Jurgen Harksen’s controversial senior counsel Johan van der Berg was struck from the roll of advocates in the Cape High Court on Monday. This was on five charges brought by the General Council of the Bar, including excessive fees he made from the Harksen saga.
Promoters of China’s controversial wireless encryption system on Tuesday accused backers of a rival United States system of ”dirty tricks” after the world industrial standards group rejected the Chinese system for global use. China will keep promoting its Wireless Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure standard and will use it domestically despite the decision.