With a warrant for his arrest dropped and a new passport in his back pocket, alleged Cosa Nostra financier Vito Palazzolo seems set to return to his homeland.
This week Italian prosecutors from the Palermo jurisdiction began hearing evidence in Cape Town as a last-ditch attempt to prosecute him, but even this attempt appears doomed as key witnesses will not be appearing in court.

Students and staff at North-West University’s Mankwe campus near Rustenburg fear that the campus will be closed down and say the university has reneged on promises that the campus will stay open. Staff and students blame only one man — vice-chancellor Theuns Eloff. ”Now he has shown his true colours,” says Daisy Sedumedi, convenor of a staff and student task group to save the Mankwe campus.

The president should not have the power to impose sentences because it is unconstitutional and blurs the separation of powers between the judiciary and the executive, the Johannesburg High Court ruled this week. Judge Kathy Satchwell found section 1(5) of the Criminal Law Amendment Act’s — allowing the president the power to re-sentence prisoners previously sentenced to death — offensive to the Constitution.

Selina Boyani’s Soweto shack, which she shares with four children, is a little larger than a single bed. It is dark, cramped and poorly ventilated, but it has one crucial advantage: it’s only a 10-minute walk to school for Nombulelo (17), the oldest child. That means no expensive taxi fares and no long hours spent commuting. These are important issues for a single mother supporting four children with the money she earns doing domestic work two days a week.

One of the great spectacles of Africa — the vast flocks of flamingos feeding at Lake Nakuru in Kenya — is under threat because silt from farming is choking the habitat, wildlife experts said on Thursday. The lake, home to more than 1,5-million of the birds, has shrunk drastically in the past 30 years and is at risk of disappearing, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service.

Three soldiers from the Black Watch were killed by a suicide bomber on Thursday in the first fatal attack on British troops since their fiercely debated deployment, at America’s request, to a new base south of Baghdad. A civilian Iraqi interpreter employed by the regiment also died in the bombing at a vehicle checkpoint.