The mitigation hearing for ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema and two other league members has ended, an ANC spokesperson said on Friday.

“The hearing finished around midnight last night [Thursday],” spokesperson Keith Khoza said. “All arguments were received and we are now waiting for a decision from the NDC [national disciplinary committee].”

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Former president Thabo Mbeki has criticised Uganda’s anti-gay bill, saying it does not make sense and what two consenting adults do in private “is really not the matter of law”.

Uganda’s Daily Monitor reports that Mbeki made the comments during a question and answer session at the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Kampala last week.

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President Jacob Zuma’s candidate for South Africa’s next chief justice is embroiled in a new scandal – this time about his endorsement of the death penalty.

The National Association of Democratic Lawyers (Nadel) has lashed out at Judge Mogoeng Mogoeng’s “active participation” in pushing in 1988 for a man whose original legal team didn’t represent him properly, to be executed.

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A husband and wife guiding team were attacked by a leopard at a game farm near Polokwane on Sunday morning, paramedics said.

A foreign trophy hunter had shot and injured a leopard late on Saturday afternoon, and a tracking party set out to find the animal, said ER24 spokesperson Andre Visser.

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Several corruption probes, including that of ANC Youth League president Julius Malema, has been stalled due to lack of funds, Public Protector Thuli Madonsela said according to a report on Sunday.

Madonsela confirmed members from her office met with the National Treasury to apply for R30m in emergency funding this week in order to cover salaries and operational expenses for more investigations, The Sunday Independent reported.

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There is an open revolt in the ruling party over this week’s Waterloo disciplinary hearing against ANC Youth League president Julius Malema.

City Press is in possession of audio material in which senior Limpopo ANC leaders aligned to Malema can be heard urging league members to revolt against the ANC leadership for bringing misconduct charges against him.

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Dozens of decomposing bodies were piled up on Friday in an abandoned hospital in Tripoli, a grim testament to the chaos roiling the capital as Libyan rebels clash with forces still loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.

The four-story hospital was in the Abu Salim neighbourhood, which has seen some of the heaviest fighting this week, although the facility was empty and it could not be determined when the men had been killed.

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Nigeria’s president says his government will bring terrorism “under control,” the day after a car bomb at United Nations headquarters in Abuja killed at least 18 people.

President Goodluck Jonathan said Saturday during a visit to the site: “As a government we are working on it, and we will bring it under control.”

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All groups claiming authority over Libya must come together to bring peace and stability in the country, President Jacob Zuma said on Saturday.

“They must all come together and negotiate a peaceful process that will lead to the formation of an inclusive transitional government and democracy in Libya,” Zuma said on his return from the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

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Shining a light on curvaceous women has been applauded as a positive movement in the fashion industry.

But could it be as unhealthy as the skinny models are?

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Cape Town – While green technology depends on a county’s resources to implement it, solar has been gaining momentum, the World Bank has said.

“It is very country specific – it depends on the availability of resources – first of all. There is a very strong emphasis on a number of technologies, but particularly solar technology is getting a lot of prominence,” Gevorg Sargsyan programme co-ordinator for the World Bank Climate Technology Fund told News24.

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Cape Town – Research In Motion has announced that the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is officially available in SA.
“Vodacom Group Limited and Research In Motion (RIM) today announced that the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is now available in South Africa from Vodacom,” the firms said in a joint statement.

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Syrian opposition figures who met in Istanbul to form a broad-based council to represent the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad said on Thursday that they needed more time to consult with activists inside Syria on its composition.

The delay indicates the difficulty in uniting an opposition decimated by decades of Assad family repression, and integrating a generation of younger activists playing a direct role on the ground in street protests facing the brunt of military assaults.

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Syrian activists said tanks stormed an eastern city and made sweeping arrests there on Wednesday as the regime faced international threats of an arms embargo and new sanctions.

Citing witnesses, the activist group called the Local Co-ordination Committees said tanks rolled into Deir el-Zour early on Wednesday. Deir el-Zour is an oil-rich but impoverished region known for its well-armed clans and tribes whose ties extend across eastern Syria and into Iraq.

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Tripoli – International journalists were freed from the Rixos Hotel on Wednesday after being held for days by armed men loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.

The journalists had been held at gunpoint by two nervous Kalashnikov-wielding guards who refused to give up their posts despite rebel victories elsewhere in the city.

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A group of American doctors will travel to Vietnam to help remove a 90kg tumour from a man’s leg, medical staff said on Wednesday.

The metre-wide tumour has been growing on 31-year-old Nguyen Duy Hai’s right leg for more than 30 years, despite an amputation at the knee 14 years ago.

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Dadaab – Wardo Mohamud Yusuf walked for two weeks with one child on her back when her 4-year-old son collapsed at her side.

The 29-year-old asked the families she was travelling with for help, but they continued on their way. Then she had to make a choice no parent should have to make. Yusuf left her 4-year-old behind.

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The Zimbabwe Youth Wing on Friday condemned ANCYL president Julius Malema for “silencing” opposition members in their country.

“It is judgmental, weird and… incites xenophobia,” the human rights group’s spokesperson Brian Muziringa told journalists in Johannesburg. Malema has previously called Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) “imperalists”.

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Geneva – An average of ten children under the age of five die every day from malnutrition and disease in Ethiopia’s Kobe refugee camp, the UN’s refugee agency said on Tuesday.

“Since the Kobe refugee camp opened in June, an average of 10 children under the age of five have died every day,” according to Adrian Edwards, a spokesperson with the office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees.

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Cape Town – A photographer from Beeld newspaper was assaulted by Unisa security guards on Tuesday while investigating complaints about a stench in a campus building.

The security guard had earlier refused to grant Beeld’s reporter, Alet Rademeyer, and the photographer, Craig Nieuwenhuizen, access to the Es’kia Mphahlele building.

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