News 16:00

BULLETIN 2 May 4 pm

Good afternoon. I am……..

In this bulletin:

# Kelly Smith and co-accused found guilty in Joslin Smith case
# Nationwide internet disruption as OpenServe Web Connect suffers outage
# And cricket: Proteas women lose second ODI in tri-series in Sri Lanka

# The Western Cape High Court in Saldanha Bay has found Kelly Smith, her boyfriend Jacquen Appollis, and friend Steveno van Rhyn guilty of kidnapping and human trafficking in connection with the disappearance of Joslin Smith. Joslin vanished from her Middelpos home on 19 February 2024. Judge Nathan Erasmus ruled the state proved its case beyond reasonable doubt. Erasmus is yet to announce a sentencing date:

# Former Truth and Reconciliation Commission lawyer Dumisa Ntsebeza has welcomed president Cyril Ramaphosa’s plan to launch a commission probing delays in apartheid-era prosecutions. This follows a lawsuit by 25 families alleging state obstruction in the NPA’s work from 2003 to 2017. Speaking to SABC News, he called the probe a crucial step towards long-overdue justice for victims of human rights violations:

# Telkom’s wholesale fixed-line division, Openserve, is experiencing a major national outage affecting its low-cost web connect fibre service and fixed-LTE network. According to MyBroadband, internet service providers Afrihost and Vox have confirmed widespread disruptions, with customers in areas including Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria, and Hartbeespoort reporting no connectivity. Downdetector showed a spike in complaints since early this morning. Some users claim they’ve had no service for days. Openserve says the issue is under investigation.

# Cricket: The Proteas women lost their second ODI in a row in the tri-series in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka won by 5 wickets with 21 balls remaining. The hosts won the toss in Colombo and sent the South Africans in to bat. Annerie Dercksen top-scored with 61 off 60 balls and the visitors scored 235 for 9. Malki Madara took four wickets and Dewmi Vihanga three. Harshitha Samarawickrama and Kavisha Dilhari’s 128-run partnership for the 4th wicket was a new record. The hosts reached the winning target in the 47th over.

# The financial indicators: The dollar trades at 18-rand-40-cents and the euro at 20-rand-82-cents. One British pound costs 24-rand-41-cents and Bitcoin trades at 96-thousand-858-dollars. Gold sells at three-thousand-253-dollars-58-cents a fine ounce and Brent crude oil is quoted at 61-dollars-84-cents a barrel.

# And finally, hundreds of cars were left with flat tyres after a truck travelling along one of Australia’s busiest highways spilled 750 kilogrammes of sharp metal shards on the road. The truck travelled for 30 kilometres before the scrap metal spillage was detected. The incident forced city-bound lanes to close for at least ten hours, with the debris damaging the tyres of about 300 cars. New South Wales state police said the incident occurred on the M1 freight and commuter route that runs north of Sydney. Authorities used magnets to collect the metal.

Stay tuned for more news………….