A United States embassy official received a scroll on Friday giving the freedom of Cape Town to US president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, Mayor Patricia de Lille said. She said the decision to award the freedom of the city to the Obamas was adopted by a majority vote in council last year. “[It]
Read more: Barack and Michelle Obama receive freedom of Cape Town from DA
Cambodia’s National Assembly has approved a bill making it a crime to deny that atrocities were committed by the genocidal 1970s communist Khmer Rouge regime. Critics say the law will be used as a weapon against the political opposition. The assembly passed the bill unanimously in the absence of opposition lawmakers, who were expelled from
Read more: Cambodia passes bill criminalising genocide denial
A group of skinheads attacked a French far-left activist in the heart of Paris’ shopping district, leaving the young man brain-dead in the hospital Thursday, officials said, in an attack that raised fears of increased far-right violence. Political tensions are high in France after months of protests against legalizing gay marriage that sometimes ended with
Read more: French leftist left brain-dead in Paris fight with skinheads
The second of the five defendants began testimony Thursday at Germany’s landmark trial over racially inspired murders – the work, according to prosecutors, of a trio of neo-Nazis. Holger G, who is alleged to have aided the killer cell by lending it his identity documents, was to read out his own statement about the crime
Read more: Second defendant starts testimony in Germany’s neo-Nazi trial
Three policemen accused of theft and extortion appeared in the Bellville Specialised Commercial Crime Court on Thursday. They allegedly kicked down Anton Pillay’s door last February and confiscated a plastic bank bag containing 15 sachets of tik and R1650, he told the court. He said the policemen remarked that he had a lot of money,
Read more: Three Cape Town policemen appear for theft and extortion
Apple attorneys in the US antitrust case on e-books went on the offensive Thursday, attacking the credibility of government witnesses and seeking to debunk key elements of the government’s case. Apple attorneys grilled a trio of witnesses from Apple rival Amazon and undertook a bruising cross-examination of a Google executive. Apple attorney Howard Heiss peppered
South Africans are becoming desensitised to crime and xenophobic attacks, the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria said on Thursday. “We fear that xenophobic attacks are becoming regular phenomena, and the South African population is becoming increasingly desensitised,” it said in a statement. “While the law prohibits heinous deeds such as sexual
Read more: South Africans ‘desensitised to crime and xenophobic attacks’
Irregular financial reporting is becoming a worry for corporate South Africa with recent research showing a greater awareness among directors and senior managers of the practice. Other investigations are highlighting a growing mistrust among staff members in big companies and a developing gulf between management and employees. New research on integrity and employee satisfaction by
Read more: 70% of sales staff in South Africa see corruption, bribery in their company
The biggest problem facing the human settlements department is reversing the social engineering of the apartheid era, Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale said on Friday. “The most important job as a strategic approach for human settlements is to deracialise this country,” Sexwale told The New Age breakfast. “That is a tough one. We meet at
Read more: Sexwale wants to destroy white-majority suburbs voting for opposition
A Cairo court has convicted 43 men and women of using foreign funds to foment unrest inside Egypt in connection with the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. Sixteen of those convicted were Americans. All but one, Robert Becker of the National Democratic Institute, had already departed. Becker fled this week rather than serve two years
The legislation to disclose client names and data to resolve an ongoing tax-evasion spat between Switzerland and the US, was met with sharp critique by the lower house of parliament in Bern, who halted the vote. The legislation, which has been dubbed by some Swiss media outlets as ‘American dictate’, is a strong demand by
Growing Islamism in the region is a driving force in the lifeblood of the Turkish protests, and even has the sympathy of the police, but the Turkish military is waiting in the wings, political expert Avigdor Eskin told RT. RT: Erdogan vowed to resolve the crisis when he returns to the country. How do you
Read more: Turkish Autumn: ‘The exact opposite of Arab Spring’
Turkey’s PM has vowed that development of Taksim Square will go ahead, despite ongoing protests. Tayyip Erdogan made the remark in Tunisia on his way back to Turkey. Erdogan is also under scrutiny, with opponents blasting him as authoritarian. As the protests entered their seventh day, casualties have risen, with three people dead and more
The National Security Agency and the FBI in the US are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post. The program, code-named PRISM,
