It was confirmed on Thursday that a 16-year-old pupil of Randburg High School is suffering from meningococcal meningitis. A spokesperson for Wilgeheuwel hospital, Marietjie Shelly, said Dominique du Plessis is in a stable condition in the intensive-care unit. ”There has been improvement since yesterday,” said Shelly.
President Thabo Mbeki has appointed Judge Sisi Khampepe of the Witwatersrand Division of the High Court to head a commission which will assess whether the Scorpions should fall under the Justice Department — or under the Department of Safety and Security.
South Africa’s police and Department of Foreign Affairs officials are liaising on the reported arrest of a South African in New York on weapons-smuggling charges, police said on Thursday. According to reports, Christiaan Dewet Spies was arrested with at least 17 others in an FBI operation at a hotel in Manhattan, New York, earlier this week.
An explosion killed at least 29 people early on Thursday when a passenger bus hit a truck carrying more than six tonnes of explosives in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangxi, local police said. The double-decker bus collided with the truck, causing the explosives to detonate, as the bus driver was trying to overtake it.
The price of Brent North Sea crude oil reached a new record high of ,25 per barrel in trading in London on Thursday amid concerns of a supply crunch, despite the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries’s move to hike output. New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in April, hit a record ,70 in electronic deals on Thursday.
Two Malawian journalists, arrested and charged with publishing false information for reporting that President Bingu wa Mutharika had moved out of a palace because he feared it was being haunted, have been granted bail, their lawyer said on Wednesday.
A Nigerian man has been jailed for four years in Hong Kong over a global e-mail scam offering a ”secret fortune” of -million, a news report said on Thursday. The e-mail went around the world offering to deposit the fortune of a dead South African businessman in return for a fee of  000.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila asked South Korea on Thursday to boost its investment in his mineral-rich but war-ravaged country, officials said. Kabila arrived in Seoul on Wednesday from Tokyo, where he made a similar call for investment.
Water, say some experts, is a much more likely reason for countries to go to war than oil, and in the largely arid countries along the river Nile in northeastern Africa, the lack of water risks bringing neighbours dangerously close to armed conflict. Egypt is the greatest user of the Nile waters and has been able to irrigate large parts of land to feed its people.
One of the biggest events in the swimming calendar, the National Aquatic Championships, will be going down to the shores of East London in April. Three of South Africa’s awesome foursome at the Athens Olympics, Roland Schoeman, Ryk Neethling and Darian Townsend, have already entered the competition.