Brazil’s 1994 World Cup winning footballer Romario said on Tuesday that the birth of his sixth child with Down’s syndrome had made him ”a happier and more tolerant” person. Ivy, born a month ago, was the 39-year-old footballer’s second daughter from his fourth wife Isabelle Bittencourt, who is in her 20s.
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) on Tuesday said it anticipates tough wage talks ahead of its first round of negotiations on Thursday with the Steel Engineering Industry Federation of South Africa. The parties will lock horns to determine wages and working conditions of 310 000 workers.
The Zimbabwe government has "little in reserve" to fight off the country’s domestic economic problems and President Robert Mugabe is effectively a rugby fullback facing a front line of opposition, said the Movement for Democratic Change on Tuesday in a post-mortem of the March 31 parliamentary election.
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Fraud and corruption accused Schabir Shaik said on Tuesday he was considering legal action after parts of his defence’s closing arguments appeared in weekend newspapers before they had been dealt with in court. ”I’ve been punch drunk for the last four years … I’m entitled to a fair trial and a fair case,” said Shaik.
Tholakele Buthelezi wasn’t always so hopeful. Unemployed with two fatherless children and no parents to support her, she considered killing herself when she was diagnosed with HIV and tuberculosis last December. But after learning about the power of meditation from a Buddhist friend, the 34-year-old from Eshowe in KwaZulu-Natal has regained her will to live.
Two unrelated shootings at schools in Gauteng on Tuesday claimed the lives of a principal and a teenager. The woman principal was shot dead in Soweto and a pupil was arrested for allegedly killing a teenager in Pretoria. Nthabiseng Nkoni, the 49-year-old principal of Asha Pre-School in Mapetla, Soweto, was shot and killed in her office, said police spokesperson Sergeant Richard Munyai.
An Australian woman pleaded guilty in court on Wednesday to killing her boyfriend because he called a phone-sex hotline. Prosecutors told the Queensland Supreme Court that in October 2003, Amanda Jane Griffin woke at 2am to find her partner Michael Campbell on the phone.
Kenya’s First Lady, Lucy Kibaki, entered the offices of the country’s biggest-circulation newspaper on Tuesday, where she allegedly slapped a television cameraman and seized reporters’ notebooks and tape recorders to protest at stories about her eccentric behaviour.
A firefighter left brain-damaged and mostly mute by an accident nearly 10 years ago stunned doctors at the weekend when he looked up suddenly and asked for his wife. Donald Herbert (43) went into a 10-week coma in 1995 after a burning roof buried him under debris and left him without air for several minutes.
The government is resisting the impoverished 4 000-strong Richtersveld community’s claim for the restitution of mineral rights in the vast stretches of diamond-rich coastal land currently held by state-owned miner Alexkor, citing changes in the mining rights regime. If the Land Claims Court agrees, the community may lose its seven-year legal battle to win restitution of the land.