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A 55-year-old businessman who shot dead a policeman who arrested him for drunken driving in 2003 was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment by the Pretoria High Court on Monday. Irish-born businessman John Raymond Whelan was sentenced for killing police officer Phillip du Plooy in March 2003.
An agreement to distribute R11-billion of the metal industry’ pension and provident funds surplus was reached on Monday by the National Union Of Metalworkers (Numsa) and the Steel and Engineering Industry Federation (Seifsa). ”The trustees of the two funds will meet again to work out the details of allocation,” said Numsa spokesperson Dumisa Ntuli.
Twenty-five years after the struggle against white minority rule, Zimbabweans are experiencing fresh trauma at the hands of the present government, said Paul Nyathi, spokesperson for the country’s Movement for Democratic Change on Monday. Nyathi was referring to the Zimbabwean government’s demolition of informal settlements.
At least 35 Rwandans accused in local grassroots tribunals of participating in the country’s 1994 genocide have committed suicide in the past five months, officials said on Monday. The suicides have all come within days of the accused persons being named as genocide perpetrators appearing before traditional gacaca courts, they said.
Japanese tyre-maker Bridgestone said on Monday it was ”too early” to say whether it would benefit from a severe blow to rival Michelin caused by the French company’s tyres proving unsafe to use at the US Grand Prix. Michelin has rejected any blame for advising seven formula one teams to pull out of Sunday’s race because of fears its tyres might be dangerous.
Afghan intelligence officials have thwarted a plot to assassinate US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and arrested three Pakistanis armed with rocket propelled grenades and assault rifles, a spokesperson for President Hamid Karzai said on Monday. Two senior Afghan officials said the men had confessed to their crimes and said they were in Afghanistan ”to fight jihad.”
Howard Powell scales the mounds of rubble at the former Akro Agate factory site, occasionally bending over to pick up a glass marble that catches his eye. He never knows what he’ll find, and for Powell that’s the best reward. Powell spends hundreds of hours travelling, digging, cleaning and cataloguing the treasures he unearths.
Georgie was hit over the head and is missing part of his ear. Penny’s right hand was mangled in a trap. Tammy’s bullet-riddled leg was amputated. Golden Arrow was shot dead, leaving her infant to starve to death. The baboons of the Cape Peninsula are caught in a war of attrition with their human neighbours.
The European Union battled on Monday to maintain some semblance of unity despite poisonous rifts opened by its Constitution crisis, as the bloc’s new fault lines came under the spotlight at a summit with the United States. Now one French minister has accused Britain — widely blamed for the collapse of a summit last week — of not sharing Europe’s ”vision”.