Mickeys

A skydiver has survived plunging 3,000ft to the ground after a parachute jump went disastrously wrong.

Lareece Butler Picture from Lareece Butler's Facebook page

Lareece Butler, 26, suffered only bruises, a broken leg and concussion when she slammed into the ground, entangled in her chute.

The parachute was attached to the plane by a static line and was supposed to open after she leapt from the aircraft.

But instead, Miss Butler became caught up in the lines, spiralling to Earth as her terrified boyfriend looked helplessly on.

Doctors said her survival was “nothing but divine intervention, nothing short of a miracle”.

She is in a stable but serious condition in hospital following the incident in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

Joos Vos, the manager of the EP Skydiving Club, said: “She was trained in all facets she needed to enjoy and perform a safe static line jump.

“Lareece exited the aircraft at 3,000ft (about 1,000m) performing a static line jump in an unstable body position which resulted in an entanglement of the main parachute with her harness.”

Family members told South African media Miss Butler was pushed out of the aircraft after refusing to jump – a claim rejected by the club.

Mr Vos said Miss Butler, who was an inexperienced skydiver, did not release her emergency parachute as she had been trained to do.

An investigation has been launched.

story from SkyNews

A student in China has confessed to stabbing to death a room-mate because of his snoring.

Snorer was stabbed in the chest and back in the middle of the night

“I told Zhao about it and he became angry. He verbally abused me several times, prompting me to kill him,” 23-year-old Guo Liwei was quoted as saying.

Zhao Yan, 22, was stabbed in the chest and back in the middle of the night.

The pair shared accommodation at Jilin agricultural university in the north-eastern province of Jilin, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Guo had previously complained to Zhao about his snoring and posted video of him snoring on a university website, which created more tension between the two, Xinhua reported.

Guo is currently awaiting sentencing by the Changchun Intermediate People’s Court.

Violent crimes have been on the rise in China, especially as the country’s rapid economic development has created a growing rich-poor gap.

story from SkyNews

Outraged parents have hit out at a school in Birmingham after pupils discovered CCTV cameras in the school’s toilets.

Grace Academy in Chelmsley Wood

Youngsters at Grace Academy in Chelmsley Wood claim they returned from half-term to find staff had installed the cameras without notifying them or their parents.

Some parents are furious at what they say is a “total invasion of privacy” and claim some pupils are so anxious about being watched they are refusing to use the facilities.

One mother whose teenage daughter attends the school is concerned the footage could fall into the wrong hands.

She told the Sunday Mercury: “She came home from school and told me security cameras had been installed in the girl’s toilets but we didn’t know anything about it.

“You would expect the school to have consulted parents first yet we received no information and no letters have been sent home explaining this decision.”

Grace Academy claims the cameras only cover the sink areas and have not yet been activated.

Privacy campaigners warn of the psychological effects of overuse of CCTV

School principal Terry Wales told Sky News: “It’s to safeguard our youngsters, many schools are using cameras now.

“We had a parents’ forum last night, we explained the arrangements and the parents were satisfied.

“We’ve found that when it comes to health and safety, children want to feel secure.”

But privacy campaigners warned about the psychological effects of the feeling of being watched, even if cameras are not switched on.

Dylan Sharpe from Big Brother Watch told Sky News: “Children are entitled to privacy like anyone else.

“We’re raising a generation of children accustomed to being constantly watched and monitored, whether cameras are switched on or not.”

Grace Academy already has 26 CCTV cameras watching other parts of the school.

The incident is the latest row to erupt between schools and parents who are concerned about safeguarding their children’s privacy.

Last year police were called to a school in Salford after parents were horrified to discover children had been filmed changing into their PE kit.

Although the footage was not misused, police seized the film after negotiating with the school.

In 2007 it was revealed schools had fingerprinted thousands of primary school children without their parent’s consent.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families later ruled that if schools want to obtain and store biometric data from children, consent is not required from parents.

story from SkyNews

A motorcycle gang has done a smash and grab on a London jeweller, making off with fistfuls of gems and watches in the middle of the day.

A motorcycle gang smashes the window of a West End jewellers in broad daylight and makes off with gems worth £50,000 each.

Five bikers mounted the pavement and screeched to a halt outside Mappin & Webb’s Piccadilly store in the West End.

They boldly spent five minutes beating through the reinforced glass windows with a sledgehammer and helping themselves to the goods, worth at least £50,000.

And when astonished passers-by stopped to look, the gang members drove their bikes at them to ward them off.

When the glass broke, it set off the store’s alarm system and poured anti-theft smoke out of the shop.

Amazingly, one man walked right past the robbers as if nothing was happening just as one of the group was leaning into the window and swiping jewels from the display.

The gang then sped off. They have not yet been traced by police.

Forensic officers and police examining the scene have cordoned off a large section of Old Bond Street, famed for its expensive jewellers.

The small holes demonstrate the strength of the reinforced glass

The same jeweller’s Regent Street store was raided at least three times in 2008. In one attack a Vauxhall Vectra was driven through the front doors and security gates.

In 2006 two teenagers were jailed after stealing goods worth about £26,000 from Mappin & Webb in Fenchurch Street.

The business holds two royal warrants and acts as silversmith to the Queen and Prince Charles.

The groups of thieves previously responsible have been dubbed “Fagin’s Kitchen” gangs after police discovered some members were aged in their early teens.

story from SkyNews

Manie Potgieter from Lydenburg, who allegedly shot and killed Litasha van der Walt and wounded his wife, Daleen in a shooting incident on Saturday night, wrote a letter in which he accused his wife of having an extra-marital affair.

“Lord forgive me!” were the opening words of the letter.

Family friends of the Potgieters told Beeld on Tuesday that he was so jealous of his wife that he kept track of her from Iraq by means of a web camera. He was doing maintenance work in Iraq.

“She had to be home at a certain time every day and switch on the computer so he could watch her. There would be hell to pay if she was late,” said a good friend.

Potgieter, 51, reportedly walked into the Trout Inn restaurant in Lydenburg on Saturday night with a .32 revolver and first shot his 37-year-old wife, wounding her, and then shot and killed Van der Walt, 25.

This happened during the 18th birthday party of his stepson, Wimpie.

Potgieter fled after the shooting. He was arrested 24 hours later at a guesthouse outside White River.

According to the investigating officer, Thomas Motau, the letter clearly shows that Potgieter was extremely jealous of his wife.

In the letter he also accuses her of having a lesbian affair.

The murder weapon was found near Van der Walt’s body shortly after the murder. It is not registered in Potgieter’s name.

Police have since seized several firearms which were hidden in the roof of Potgieter’s house in Schoeman Street.

A rare Striker shotgun (with a drum magazine which holds 12-gauge shot), a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun and a .22 rifle were found, among others. Potgieter only has a licence for the Striker.

They also seized two swords, a hunting knife, a panga and a large amount of ammunition.

Potgieter told police that he had served as a mercenary in Iraq, but Beeld has established that he was working as a maintenance technician for an international company, RMS, in 2007.

He did maintenance work on buildings in the city of Tadji, where there is a large American military base. He was also responsible for the maintenance of the base’s electricity network and generators.

Daleen Potgieter is still being treated in the Eugène Marais hospital in Pretoria. Her condition is stable.

Her husband appeared briefly in court in Lydenburg on Tuesday. He will appear again on Wednesday and remains behind bars.

taken from News24

Pretoria – With only 93 days to go before the start of the 2010 World Cup, residents of Mamelodi-East near Pretoria during violent protests on Tuesday threatened to disrupt the tournament.

They are demanding that the government immediately supply them with houses, electricity, running water and flushing toilets.

“If the government could spend millions of rands and prepare for the World Cup so quickly, it’s a disgrace that people are still living in squalor in squatter camps,” Vusi Nkosi, a resident, said on Tuesday.

A schoolgirl armed with stones walks towards a police vehicle in Tsamayaweg, Mamelodi-East.

“The soccer means nothing to us because we won’t be able to watch it anyway, since we don’t have electricity.

“This time we will fight and toyi-toyi like the ANC taught us.”

Over 6 000 people live in seven squatter camps in close proximity to each other in Mamelodi-East.

Riotous residents have been blockading Tsamaya Road, Hector Peterson Street and Hans Strijdom Avenue with burning tyres and rubbish since 20:00 on Monday.

On Tuesday the police repeatedly tried to disperse the crowd by firing rubber bullets at them and firing live rounds in the air.

Several people were hit by rubber bullets.

Johannes Maheso, police spokesperson, said four men were arrested.

This protest followed similar demonstrations in Hammanskraal, Soshanguve and Brits.

Veronica Mphahlele, a community leader, said the government promised in 2000 that they would be given permanent houses and land of their own.

“It’s 10 years later and we’re still in the same position. All they do is send police to come and shoot at us.”

The residents are accusing council members, the police and the metro police of illegally selling land and houses intended for the poor to enrich themselves.

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An American man is claiming R12.6m from the Monateng Safari Lodge outside Pretoria after he fell on a wet stoep.

US citizen Michael Francis Klesh walks with a stick to the North Gauteng Court in Pretoria.

Michael Francis Klesh, 55, a marketing specialist, says in his court documents that he fractured a vertebra and broke his left wrist. He was supposedly in shock for three to four months.

He is claiming R12 627 650 from Monateng after he fell outside his accommodation unit on the afternoon of January 19 2008.

Klesh alleges there wasn’t sufficient protection from rain water on the stoep and that there was no warning that the tiles might be slippery or dangerous when they’re wet.

Morris Baslian, Klesh’s legal representative, said Klesh and the defendant reached a verbal agreement when Klesh booked his accommodation by phone on January 10 2008.

When he arrived on January 14, he was given a piece of paper to sign “which is at best an offer and not a contract”.

The receptionist said the document was a “mere formality”.

Baslian said the defendant is relying on the indemnity clause in that document, which was not a condition of the original agreement (when Klesh made his booking).

The indemnity clause is also “hidden” in the document.

At the bottom of the document the signatory agrees to abide by Monateng’s rules and regulations, and gives consent for their vehicle to be searched.

Baslian said the indemnity clause should have been pointed out to the signatory.

Since the receptionist said the document is merely a formality, Klesh had no reason to suspect or believe that it would contain any conditions.

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He loved him and was a big fan of his music, but now this musician had robbed them of their little boy, said a grieving Joyce Ntoga, aunt of Prince Mahube, 17, outside the Kliptown mortuary in Soweto, moments after she and other family members identified Prince’s body.

Phumelelo Masemelo's mother, Mameetse, lies in bed with a photograph of her son next to her.

Prince, Phumelelo Masemelo, 16, Mlugisi Cwayi, 17, and Andile Mthombeni, 19, died on Monday after musician Molemo Maarohanye, better known as Jub Jub and his friend Themba Tshabalala, drove their two Mini Coopers into the group of children.

The four friends died on the scene while two other schoolchildren, Fumani Mushanana, 17, and Frank Mlabo, 18, were seriously injured and taken to Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital.

One of the boys is currently in a coma.

Maarohanye – who had also been a contestant in Survivor SA: Santa Carolina – and Tshabalala were apparently drag racing when the accident happened.

Blood samples were taken to determine whether the men had used drugs.

Police were still waiting for the lab results, said police spokesperson Inspector Kay Makhubela.

According to metro police spokesperson inspector Edna Mamonyane, breathalyser tests showed that Tshabalala’s blood alcohol levels were twice over the legal limit and Maarohanye’s was under the legal limit.

Family, friends and bystanders reacted with shock and anger on Wednesday.

“He was such a clever boy and wanted to become an architect.”

“He always told his mother: ‘Give me only two years and I will change this little house of yours. Jub Jub robbed us of him and he loved Jub Jub so much,” said Ntoga.

Prince’s mother, Janette Mahube, was too shocked to talk to the media.

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At least 11 people have been killed and more than 60 injured – including women and children on their way to school – in a suicide car bombing in Pakistan.

The target was a police building in the eastern city of Lahore where “important” suspects are interrogated.

No-one has yet claimed responsibility for the blast, although it is thought to have been the work of the Taliban or an allied miltant group.

More than 600 people have died in a wave of terrorist attacks in Pakistan that began last October.

The latest attack comes amid reports of a crackdown on the Taliban and al Qaeda in the country.

TV footage showed a huge crater in front of the police building where the bomb went off.

“This place was used to interrogate important suspects. Presently there was none such suspect, but more then 40 staff were manning the place,” said Lahore police chief Pervez Rathore.

Noorul Huda, a student at a nearby religious school who suffered a head wound in the explosion, told reporters: “Blocks and pieces of the roof fell upon us and six of us were injured.

“It was total chaos outside and people were running and crying for help.”

A Lahore government official said 11 people had died and a number of those injured were in critical condition.

A hospital spokesman said the dead included at least one woman and a young girl, apparently part of a group heading to a school.

“People are coming with multiple wounds, many with head injuries and broken limbs,” he said.

Other nearby buildings, including a mosque, also were damaged by the blast.

story from SkyNews

Two women paramedics were attacked in Durban Deep, west of Johannesburg, while attending to a toddler who had suffered burn wounds, reports said on Monday.

Senior Superintendent Noxolo Kweza said the two women were called out to Durban Deep in Roodepoort on Friday night after receiving a call from a desperate mother that her 2-year-old son had been burnt.

The Star newspaper reported that the two paramedics drove to a pick-up point along Main Reed road where residents are often asked to bring their patients.

The mother, her son and two men, who are family friends, waited for the paramedics there. At one stage, the mother returned home to get a jersey for her son.

“While they [the paramedics] were busy with the child in the ambulance, three armed men appeared from the bushes, threatened the two men and told them to run away, otherwise they were going to shoot them,” said Kweza.

“The two men ran down the road and the suspects took the women into the bushes.

“They raped one woman and attempted to rape the other one.”

The two men, who ran away, alerted the police and accompanied them to the scene to search for the women.

The assailants fled when the police arrived on the scene.

Beeld newspaper said the three men fled in the ambulance, which was later found abandoned in the area.

The two women had not yet made statements to the police because they had been too traumatised.

Both women were admitted to the Life Flora Clinic.

The boy was not injured in the attack and was admitted to hospital for treatment to the burn wounds.

taken from News24

Since he was elected president of the ANC Youth League two years ago, Julius Malema has apparently not paid any tax.

Julius Malema

In addition, not one of the four companies of which he was still a registered director and shareholder, complied with tax regulations.

It also transpired that his engineering company SGL at the end of last year was awarded an additional 13 contracts by the Polokwane municipality.

This was apart from the tenders of more than R140m that SGL received from another eight municipalities in Limpopo between 2007 and 2009.

An inquiry last month found that construction on all of these contracts was extremely shoddy or never completed.

ID leader Patricia De Lille learned confidentially that Malema’s companies also had not received certificates to verify that their tax matters were in order.

City Press apparently learned that the SA Revenue Service has appointed a senior investigation team to look into Malema’s affairs.

Malema recently said that Sars was welcome to investigate him and said he was being targeted.

taken from News24

A 58-year-old woman was shot dead in front of her 14-year-old daughter at Lujecweni village in Tsolo, Eastern Cape police said on Monday.

Superintendent Mzukisi Fatyela said the woman was at home at around 21:30 on Sunday when an unidentified man kicked the door open and fired a gun.

“He did not say anything before firing the two shots, and after that he fled the scene.”

Fatyela said police did not know the motive. They found cartridges of a 9mm pistol on the scene.

The girl was unharmed.

Police were investigating a case of murder and had not yet arrested anybody.

taken from News24

Vineyards under threat from government-controlled mining company.

Government-controlled mining company, African Exploration Mining and Finance Corporation (AEMFC) (Ltd) has applied to the Department of Mineral Resources for the right to explore several areas of both Stellenbosch and Tygerberg for ore.

Some of the main wineries likely to be affected include Jordan Estate, Mooiplaas, Zevenwacht and De Grendel and the area concerned also covers a great deal of the Bottelary Hills Renosterbos Conservancy as well. Tielman Roos, owner of Mooiplaas and the chairperson of the Bottelary conservancy area, said he was concerned about the application from an ecological and tourism point of view, whilst George Sieraha, chairman of the Durbanville Community Forum, expressed the fear that the application was an attempt to expropriate land for low-cost housing by stealth.

In a statement issued yesterday, chairman of the prestigious Cape Winemakers Guild, Johan Malan from Simonsig, was strongly opposed to any such development at all. He pointed out that not only would the proposed mining activities destroy the UNESCO registered Bottelary Hills Renosterbos Conservancy and the vineyards that attract large numbers of tourists to South Africa every year; it would also result in the loss of employment and income for a great many families working on the wine farms in these areas.

Malan goes on to say ‘Pristine and unique terroir coupled with great winemaking skills are the usual credentials for great wines and mining in the winelands will damage the reputation of South African wines in the international market. The long term benefits of protecting the natural beauty of the winelands will far outweigh the short term advantages of mining.’

Gary Jordan, whose farm is one of those threatened by the proposed exploration, has set up a Facebook page Stop Mining Our Winelands to garner support and share information. All protests and comments from interested and affected parties must be registered by 9th March 2010 and all information on how to do so is available on the page.

taken from News24

Baby Ashleigh Louw died on Friday, Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital clinical manager Dr Pungie Lingham said.

“Sadly, she has passed on,” he said. “Our condolences go out to the family.”

He said she died around midday but could not reveal the cause of death for privacy reasons.

“Baby Ashleigh was very ill and she’s been in ICU [intensive care unit] under very intense management both medically and otherwise,” said Lingham.

Ashleigh had an operation on January 17 after being born on January 9 with her heart outside her chest, covered only by a thin layer of skin.

The condition is known as Pentallogy of Cantrell which occurs in one in a million babies.

taken from News24

A newly released file on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann is “gold dust” and could lead to a breakthrough, her parents’ spokesman has said.

CCTV of the girl spotted in New Zealand

Clarence Mitchell told Sky News it was disgraceful that information about possible sightings of Madeleine has only emerged now after sitting in a box since 2008, when the case was closed by Portuguese police.

“The McCanns have been tearing their hair out for a long time, they’re very frustrated this information has been sitting in a file since July 2008,” he said.

“This information is gold dust to them. Kate and Gerry need all of it and they want a full review of all the information it contains.

“Our investigators are working at times with one hand tied behind their back.

“Any leads must come through Portugal but they must come to Kate and Gerry.

“Our investigators will now work very hard and three years on it will hopefully lead to the breakthrough Kate and Gerry have been waiting for.”

Sky’s crime correspondent Martin Brunt said the McCanns first became aware of the file after they won a court battle to ban publication of a book that claimed their daughter was dead.

It was during this case that the detective in charge of the case admitted that new information had come in since the investigation had been closed but was sitting in a box marked “not relevant”.

The new evidence is available because four newspapers applied to the state prosecutor in the Algarve.

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