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Platinum and palladium prices are dropping sharply on signs that South African mining companies are close to reaching a labor agreement that would end a four-month strike. Platinum fell $28, or 2 percent, to close at $1,400.70 an ounce. Palladium lost $29.30, or 3.6 percent, to $777.80 an ounce. …

Desmond Tutu is a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end apartheid in South Africa, and has long been a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which uses nonviolent means to challenge the Israeli occupation of Palestine and is the initiative being attacked by these bills. Tutu notes that these legislative initiatives are aimed “at punishing and intimidating those who speak their conscience and challenge the human rights violations endured by the Palestinian people.”

The group of five major emerging national economies known as the BRICS has rejected the Western sanctions against Russia and the “hostile language” being directed at the country over the crisis in Ukraine. “The escalation of hostile language, sanctions and counter-sanctions, and force does not contribute to a sustainable and peaceful solution, according to international law, including the principles and purposes of the United Nations Charter,” foreign ministers of the BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - said in a statement issued on Monday.

Brazil is fighting against time to avoid crippling power blackouts and electricity rationing as a drought prevents the world's most water-rich nation from recharging its hydroelectric dams. A decade of growth has diversified the electricity system away from hydropower, but policymakers, industrial companies and investors in the world's seventh-largest economy may find little cause to relax.

The G7 club of wealthy nations has canceled a summit with Russia over its annexation of Crimea, but emerging economies have protested against its exclusion from a G20 meeting. […] For its part, US ally Australia had indicated Russia might also be excluded from a G20 summit in Brisbane in November. But Brazil, China, India, and South Africa rejected the idea. They said, together with Russia, also at The Hague, where almost 60 countries had sent VIPs to a Nuclear Security Summit, that “the escalation of hostile language, sanctions and counter-sanctions … does not contribute to a sustainable and peaceful...

STATE DEPARTMENT — With Russia's most vocal critics imposing economic sanctions over Crimea, some of Moscow's allies are also questioning its actions in Ukraine. In Syria's civil war, China and Russia have together blocked tougher action against President Bashar al-Assad, denouncing foreign support for the rebels as a breach of Syrian sovereignty. Now, China has quietly split from Russia over Crimea -- on the same issue of sovereignty. "China always respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states. The Crimean crisis should be resolved politically under the frameworks of law and order. We call on all sides to remain...

 An Islamic organisation has voiced its disgust on Friday after a 10 year-old-boy was assaulted and molested at mosque in Lenasia.Earlier reports said the boy was assaulted at a church, but according to Jamiatul Ulama South Africa the incident happened at a mosque in Lenasia’s Extension 11. Jamiatul Ulama South Africa general secretary Moulana E I Bham said the victim was molested by three teenagers and a 23-year-old man, who have since been arrested. “We would like to strongly denounce this incident and welcome the quick arrests which have so far been made of the suspects.” Police spokesperson Kay Makhubela...

South Africa imposed rolling power cuts for the first time since 2008 on Thursday as it struggled to cope with coal shortages and technical problems caused by recent heavy rains. State-owned electricity firm Eskom said incessant downpours over the past week had flooded mines and left stockpiles too wet to use in its coal-fired power plants. . . . . . . . . . "We do not believe we have a crisis in energy at this present time," said Water Minister Edna Molewa.

Former Congressman Mel Reynolds breaks his silence after being deported from Zimbabwe. He says he’s now in hiding. Eyewitness News reached the former Congressman by phone in South Africa. That’s where he says he has been in “hiding” since his flight out of Zimbabwe a little more than a week ago. Mel Reynolds spent 2 years and 10 months in Congress. Last month, he was in a Zimbabwean jail for six days. […] Reynolds says he will begin publicly revealing information he claims to have about people illegally doing business with the Mugabe regime at a press conference in South...

SNIPPET: "Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg is among four people who have been arrested on suspicion of Syria-related terrorism offences, police have said. Mr Begg, 45, who was held by the US authorities for almost three years, was arrested earlier with two other men and a woman in the West Midlands. He was detained on suspicion of attending a terrorist training camp and facilitating terrorism overseas." SNIPPET: "Mr Begg was arrested in Hall Green in Birmingham. The other people arrested - a 36-year-old man from Shirley, a 44-year-old woman and her son, 20, both from Sparkhill - are being...

Moonbat demigod Nelson Mandela’s collectivist legacy continues to unfold in what was once a prosperous and relatively civilized country: The Economic Freedom Fighters have stuck to their guns for the nationalisation of mines and expropriation of land without compensation. Party leader Julius Malema on Saturday unveiled the organisation’s elections manifesto at Mehlareng Stadium in Tembisa, east of Johannesburg. “We want to do away with colonial patterns of ownership in South Africa,” he said. That means if a white person owns it, the government is going to take it, just like in Zimbabwe, which has been reduced to basket case status...

A professor from George Mason University ran a slide show of naked lesbians to accompany her presentation at the Modern Language Association (MLA) annual convention in Chicago this year. Although South Africa legalized gay marriage in 2006, there have been “assaults on black lesbians since then,” according to Rachel Ann Lewis. She did not provide details on those assaults. Lewis, according to her GMU page, “is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Women and Gender Studies Program at George Mason University.” “Prior to joining George Mason, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Transnational Sexualities in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality...

An ancient dinosaur nursery - the oldest nesting site ever found - has been unearthed in an excavation at a site in South Africa. The 190-million-year-old nesting site of the prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus reveals significant clues about the evolution of complex reproductive behaviour in early dinosaurs. It discover clutches of eggs, many with embryos, as well as tiny dinosaur footprints, providing the oldest known evidence that the hatchlings remained at the nesting site long enough to at least double in size. “This research project, which has been ongoing since 2005 continues to produce groundbreaking results and excavations continue. First it...

who created Nelson Mandela memorial included a RABBIT inside his earA 30ft sculpture of Nelson Mandela has angered South African officials as the sculptors left a ‘signature’ on the artwork – a sculpted rabbit tucked inside one of the bronze ears. The bronze memorial, which was unveiled outside the government complex in Pretoria, after Mandela’s funeral on December 16, is billed as the largest statue of the South African leader in the world. Officials demand that the miniature rabbit is to be removed from the statue, claiming it mocks Mandela and his life’s work. The department of arts and culture...

A rabbit hidden in the newly erected Nelson Mandela statue at the Union Buildings had the department of arts and culture baffled, Beeld newspaper reported on Saturday. The sculptors of the nine metre bronze-plated statue, Andre Prinsloo and Ruhan Janse van Vuuren, secretly added the rabbit to the work, according to the report. The duo told the newspaper the rabbit was a "small trademark" of their work after the department did not allow them to engrave their signatures on the statue trousers. They said it also represented the tight deadline they were working under as rabbit in Afrikaans "haas" also...

RAZIL’S snap decision last month, after 10 years of deliberations, to choose the Saab Gripen jet fighter ahead of American and French competitors, is the first time a deal of this size has been done without involving superpowers or United Nations Security Council members. The deal, at the initial stage worth $4.5bn for 36 Gripen NGs, could open up the possibility for deliveries of 100 or more aircraft, and also widens access for South African defence and other technology exports, in particular among fellow Brics countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). The market has suddenly moved from seeing a...

We’ve known for some time that Nelson Mandela was a member of the South African Communist Party. It was hard for fawning liberals to acknowledge the meaning of his membership, so they came up with a narrative explaining it. Their story went something like this: He only briefly joined to get the benefit of their organizational talent, and his membership was rather symbolic, and hardly meaningful. What is important is his steadfast commitment to non-violence, his adherence to political democracy, and the role he played after emerging from prison in the waning days of apartheid.

South Africa's president Jacob Zuma has told how he used to practise witchcraft against white people. Speaking in his native Zulu language at a pre-election rally in the country's rural north, he told a crowd of his voodoo past. 'I used to practise witchcraft around here, bewitching the Boers during apartheid', Zuma reportedly said.

A new species of crustacean has been named in honour of Nelson Mandela. The squat lobster is related to hermit crabs and now has the Latin name Munidopsis mandelai in honour of the South African revolutionary. The sea creature was discovered in a relatively unexplored area of the Southwest Indian Ocean Ridge, off the coast of South Africa, in 2011.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — With the death of Nelson Mandela, the political party and broad coalition he helped to bind together are coming apart at the seams. The African National Congress remains in power, holding nearly two-thirds of the seats in Parliament, but it is losing popularity even among its staunchest supporters. To many South Africans, the ANC looks less and less like a party of legendary anti-apartheid leaders and more like a grouping of crony capitalists and dispensers of patronage.