SA human rights ‘worsened', US claims; Stormers' new logo: Today's top 7 stories in 7 minutes
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US State Department claims human rights have 'worsened' in SA
- Dirco criticised the US State Department's human rights report, calling it inaccurate and a misrepresentation of South Africa's constitutional democracy, particularly regarding land reform and racial issues.
- The US report claimed there was a worsening human rights situation in South Africa, citing the Expropriation Act, alleged abuses against racial minorities, and government inaction on human rights abuses.
- Dirco highlighted UN support for South Africa's land reforms and plans to release documents to counter the US report's distortions, emphasising South Africa's commitment to democratic processes and human rights protection.
X/@DonaldDavhie
Anti-colonial allies: South Africa deepens ties with Iran amid strained US relations
- The SANDF chief's visit to Tehran aimed to strengthen ties and discuss shared anti-colonial and justice-driven goals.
- General Rudzani Maphwanya emphasised deepening defence ties, mutual respect, and solidarity with oppressed people, including Palestinians.
- The visit occurred amid escalating tensions between Washington and Pretoria over South Africa's relationships with nations the US designates as adversaries.
Guptas unhappy being called 'infamous', tell ConCourt Nulane retrial won't be fair
- Accused in the Gupta-linked Nulane scam are appealing the Supreme Court of Appeal's (SCA) decision to overturn their acquittals and order a retrial, arguing it prejudices their right to a fair trial.
- The appellants claim the SCA made factual findings and improperly referenced the Zondo Commission's findings, which they argue are not binding and inadmissible.
- The Nulane prosecutor argues the SCA only assessed errors of law and that its finding of a prima facie case doesn't equate to a finding of guilt. The Constitutional Court has yet to decide whether to hear the appeals.
There's snow place like home: Meet SA's 18-year-old ski sensation going to Winter Olympics
- Lara Markthaler, an 18-year-old skier with German-South African heritage, has qualified to represent South Africa in Alpine skiing at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
- Markthaler, who has lived and trained in various countries, expresses pride in representing South Africa and enjoys standing out among traditional ski nations.
- She trains extensively, balancing on-snow practice with gym sessions, and looks forward to carrying the South African flag and inspiring other South African athletes.
Lotto licence saga: ANC-linked group led before Sizekhaya win, court papers show
- Minister Parks Tau revealed that Ringeta Consortium, linked to an ANC donor, initially scored highest in the bid for SA's new lotto operator but was later surpassed by Sizekhaya Consortium due to better financial projections.
- Questions arose about Deputy President Paul Mashatile's sister-in-law's stake in Sizekhaya, but Tau stated that evaluators found no concerns regarding political influence within the consortium.
- Tau defended his decision to award the license to Sizekhaya, citing a reassessment process that prioritised maximising profits, and addressed concerns about political involvement in Ringeta's bid.
Supplied/Shoprite Holdings
How two women bought a failing cookie company for one rand... and triumphed
- In 2013, Adri Williams and Eunice Nyobole bought the failing Khayelitsha Cookie Company for R1 and transformed it into a successful women-led social enterprise.
- The company now employs 70 women, produces 80 000 cookies daily, and supports approximately 500 dependents through its workers' incomes.
- Khayelitsha Cookies has expanded into the retail market through private label partnerships and developed a healthier cookie range inspired by the need to combat malnutrition in children.
Shaun Roy/Gallo Images
Stormers unveil new logo replacing iconic 26-year-old 'lightning bolt'
- The Stormers have unveiled a new logo, replacing their 26-year-old design, to symbolise unity, progress, and a commitment to community connections.
- The rebrand reflects the team's financial stability and new leadership, aiming for growth, player development, and inspiring their fanbase.
- The new logo incorporates elements like the Stormers jersey hoops, a subtle lightning bolt, and the shape of Cape Town Stadium, emphasising unity and heritage.
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Cantor Weighed Tariff Trades for Hedge Funds But Shut Them Down
(Bloomberg) -- Cantor Fitzgerald LP had internal discussions about facilitating trades for hedge funds based on the outcome of legal challenges to Trump administration tariffs, but shut down the idea before executing any transactions, according to people familiar with the matter. The New York brokerage and investment bank was run for three decades by US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a key figure in the nation's trade policy, and is now led by his son Brandon. The younger Lutnick was asked in a letter from Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden released Thursday to disclose transactions or agreements the firm has made relating to products that would let institutions effectively bet on the legality of President Donald Trump's tariffs. The US-Canadian Road Safety Gap Is Getting Wider Sunseeking Germans Face Swiss Backlash Over Alpine Holiday Congestion To Head Off Severe Storm Surges, Nova Scotia Invests in 'Living Shorelines' Five Years After Black Lives Matter, Brussels' Colonial Statues Remain For Homeless Cyclists, Bikes Bring an Escape From the Streets Cantor received a client inquiry about possibly facilitating such trades, which are done by larger Wall Street banks, and some staff discussed with potential clients about arranging them before the idea was rejected, said the people, who requested anonymity to describe internal deliberations. The firm takes no directional position on brokered trades, and only takes commission when it matches a buyer and a seller. 'We have not facilitated or executed any trades in that market,' Cantor spokesperson Erica Chase told Bloomberg by phone. Warren and Wyden had cited a late July report by Wired that alleged the financial services company created a 'litigation finance' product that allows it to bet that the courts will strike down the tariffs. In theory, such trades would connect a company vulnerable to US tariffs with a fund willing to bet that such tariffs might be reversed. 'Public reporting indicates that Cantor has offered companies the opportunity to trade their legal claim to a future tariff refund in exchange for 20 to 30% of the duties the company paid,' the letter said. 'In this scenario, if the courts determine that the tariffs are illegal, the company stands to recover hundreds of millions of dollars.' In reference to the cited story from July, Chase, the Cantor spokesperson, said 'what is being reported about our business is absolutely false.' Cantor's dealings have been a key area of focus for ethics watchdogs who are on alert for conflicts of interest, given Lutnick is a prominent figure in shaping Trump's policies and other potentially market-moving matters. Brandon Lutnick has said he wants the firm 'to be sitting at the heart of crypto,' an industry that has boomed under the current administration. Wyden, in an email to Bloomberg, accused Lutnick's son of 'brokering huge bets on policies the Commerce Secretary is personally directing.' 'When you've got the Commerce Secretary's son running the Commerce Secretary's old Wall Street firm,' Wyden wrote, 'you're going to face some tough questions about whether everything is on the level.' Among the questions the senators posed were how many tariff refund agreements Cantor has finalized, whether it created them at the request of a specific client and if anyone at the firm had communicated with people in the US government about the tariffs or related legal cases, including Trump and the Commerce secretary. (Updates with additional details throughout.) Americans Are Getting Priced Out of Homeownership at Record Rates Dubai's Housing Boom Is Stoking Fears of Another Crash Bessent on Tariffs, Deficits and Embracing Trump's Economic Plan Why It's Actually a Good Time to Buy a House, According to a Zillow Economist What Declining Cardboard Box Sales Tell Us About the US Economy ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Sign in to access your portfolio
Washington Post
3 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Eggs, tomatoes, sandwiches: The history of food as protest projectiles
The Roman Emperor Vespasian might not be as well-known as his predecessors Nero and Caligula, but when he died in A.D. 79, he left behind a legacy that included stabilizing the empire, beginning construction of the structure that would become known as the Colosseum — and being the first politician recorded to have been pelted with flying produce. During a visit to Africa, Vespasian was hit by rioters with turnips, according to the Roman historian Suetonius. Suetonius didn't note precisely what had angered the people or how the emperor reacted, but one thing is clear: They were onto something, and some 2,000 years later, the tradition of hurling food in political protest endures. Throughout the centuries, protesters have flung all manner of foods — eggs, pies, tomatoes, even fully composed sandwiches — at the targets of their ire. The latest incident occurred Sunday, when a man turned his Subway sandwich into a projectile and tossed it at a federal law enforcement officer, who was on the streets one day before President Donald Trump announced he would take over D.C. police 'to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.' The man has now been fired from his Justice Department job, Attorney General Pam Bondi said, and is facing felony assault charges. Trump has been clear about his concerns over fruits and vegetables flying in his direction. In a 2022 videotaped testimony, Trump said, 'I think that [his guards] have to be aggressive in stopping that from happening,' according to a transcript in a lawsuit that accused Trump's security detail of assaulting protesters who allegedly planned to toss foodstuffs at a 2015 campaign rally. 'Because if that happens, you can be killed if that happens. … To stop somebody from throwing pineapples, tomatoes, bananas, stuff like that, yeah, it's dangerous stuff.' There are no prominent accounts of politicians being assassinated, or even maimed, by flying food. And pineapples? The bulky tropical treats would make terrible projectiles — and how many of them would one need to lug around, anyway, to ensure a successful attack? Bananas, too, are an unlikely missile. On tomatoes, though, Trump does have a point. Just hours after the news of Trump's fruit fears emerged in 2022, then-newly reelected French President Emmanuel Macron was pelted with a hail of cherry tomatoes when he appeared at an open-air market in a Parisian suburb. Macron, however, survived the onslaught, thanks in part to an umbrella someone nearby hoisted to shield him. Here's a rundown of foods that protesters have aimed at politicians and others: On Sunday, FBI agents were already on the ground in Washington, helping local law enforcement deal with crime, but Trump had not yet taken control of the city's police force or sent in the National Guard. Still, the presence of federal officers on the U Street NW corridor was enough to allegedly set off Sean Charles Dunn, who according to a federal court filing yelled obscenities at Metro Transit Police and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers. He allegedly called them fascists, too. Then came the sandwich toss seen 'round the city: Dunn allegedly turned his Subway sandwich into an overhand fastball, aimed directly at an officer's chest. He fled on foot, only to be arrested sometime later. Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, announced Wednesday that Dunn was being charged with felony assault. At a Thursday news briefing, Bondi said Dunn, a Justice Department employee, had been fired. The charge drew immediate ridicule on a subreddit for D.C., where commenters suggested Pirro could have accused Dunn of 'assault with a deli weapon' or 'assault with a breadly weapon.' Dunn became an instant hero to some: His protest was quickly turned into graffiti art, ready to share on social media. 'The gyro we deserve,' noted one commenter. Rotten produce, particularly tomatoes, has historically been associated with theatrical performances more than political ones. (The popular movie-reviewing site Rotten Tomatoes plays on the trope.) A bon mot that is often attributed to playwright Oscar Wilde — that when a rotten cabbage fell at his feet onstage, he apocryphally addressed its sender, quipping 'every time I smell it, I shall be reminded of you' — was perhaps inspired by an actual event from 1895. The angry father of Wilde's lover arrived at a performance of his hit play 'The Importance of Being Ernest' with a bouquet of vegetables he meant to throw, although he was turned away by police. And an actor in a New York Times story from a dozen years earlier was described as being 'demoralized by tomatoes' during a lackluster performance. It's unlikely, however, that tomatoes were thrown at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, as is sometimes described, since tomatoes weren't introduced in Europe until much later. Plenty of politicians, too, have been targeted by tomatoes (which are technically a fruit, not a vegetable, something the lawyers in the Trump deposition actually discussed in a very enjoyable aside.) Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was spared from a splat during a book signing at the Mall of America when the man lobbing the fruit at her from a balcony in 2009 missed; in 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's motorcade in Egypt was hit. And while Trump's fear of lethal tomatoes (maybe he's been watching too many B movies?) is overestimated, they can hurt — particularly if you're whacked with a hard, unripe specimen. One of the rules of La Tomatina — the festival in Bunol, Spain, where participants sling tomatoes at one another in celebration — is that you smash the tomatoes before throwing them at another person, to lessen the impact (and maximize the squish?). Egging is a long-standing tradition, carried on by middle-schoolers and political activists alike. As with tomatoes, the rotten variety has more impact (i.e. stench). In 2022, a trucker convoy protesting outside the home of a Democratic state lawmaker in Oakland, California, was met with a volley of eggs, many tossed by kids annoyed by the intrusion of the big rigs. The origins of the practice go back centuries. In the 1871 novel 'Middlemarch,' a man's ill-fated run for Parliament includes a scene in which a mocking crowd pelts his image — and him — with eggs. Over the years, prominent U.S. politicians have taken shellings: Eggs were lobbed at Vice President Richard M. Nixon at several stops on his 1960 presidential campaign; Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) was similarly greeted on the presidential trail in 1980. President Bill Clinton took an incoming oeuf in 2001 during a trip to Poland. And California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should probably win the title for most-agreeable target for his reaction to getting hit in the (considerable) shoulders during his 2003 campaign. He defended the egging as part of free speech and joked that the perpetrator 'owes me bacon now.' A pie to the face is a quintessential comedic stunt, and it's all the more primally satisfying when the object is a person of importance. The visual gag was popularized in vaudeville and in silent movies, and on-screen pieing became a cinematic staple, with practitioners such as Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and the Three Stooges. Many a political mug has been mashed into a pie, some the work of collectives such as the Biotic Baking Brigade and Pie Kill, which targeted the rich and powerful with pastry. The pie-to-the face roll call includes San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, New York Mayor Abraham Beame, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-New York), Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman and Watergate plumber G. Gordon Liddy. A 2004 book by the Biotic Baking Brigade called 'Pie Any Means Necessary' offered practical advice for aspiring piers (selecting the right variety, aim and the like) as well as history and ruminations on the deeper meanings behind the prank, which it deemed a 'creative tool in the toolbox of resistance.' 'Pie-throwing utilizes carnival humor,' according to an essay in the book, 'unsettling the authority and control that those in power try to project.' 'Milkshaking' is a relatively more recent innovation. That could be because the milkshake itself has a shorter history than other commonly employed protest foods. It became a phenomenon employed against right-wing figures in the United Kingdom as Britain considered leaving the European Union. One protester tossed a banana-and-salted-caramel milkshake at Brexit leader Nigel Farage. Other targets included anti-Islam activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, and anti-feminist political commentator Carl Benjamin, who was hit by a creamy treat on at least four occasions. A point against the practice is the cost, relative to, say, the moldy, leftover contents of one's produce drawer. But it has the advantage of being visually appealing — the sight of a suit-wearing stiff coated in sticky, drippy dairy is quite photogenic. And as The Washington Post reported at the time, 'attackers sipping shakes are far less conspicuous than bystanders clutching eggs.' The tossing of ribbons of pasta is more specific to a part of the world that's very much in the news now. In Russia and Ukraine, the expressions 'hang noodles over your ears' reportedly is akin to 'pulling one's leg' or deceiving them. In the midst of the 2014 Ukrainian crisis, in which the country's pro-Kremlin president was ousted, protesters threw piles of spaghetti at the Russian consulate in Odesa, essentially accusing the Russian media of inaccurate coverage.
Business Insider
an hour ago
- Business Insider
Switzerland is eyeing cuts to its F-35 stealth fighter order amid price battles with the US
Switzerland is considering reducing its F-35 order in response to price negotiations with the US. It said the US government had abandoned a fixed price plan, leaving Switzerland vulnerable to inflation and tariffs. Some US allies and partners have questioned the F-35 over Trump's treatment of allies. Switzerland said it might scale back its order of US-made F-35 fighter jets after failing to fix the price in its negotiations with the White House. Amid shifts in US attitudes toward allies and partners, some Western nations have questioned the jet and, in at least one case, even rejected the fifth-generation fighter for European alternatives. Switzerland still wants the F-35, considering its high-end capabilities, but it may cut its order. Switzerland said that attempts to negotiate a fixed price for the F-35A fighter jet, made by the US's Lockheed Martin, were unsuccessful, with higher costs expected as a result. Switzerland may now order fewer F-35s, the defense minister, Martin Pfister, said in a press conference on Wednesday, per Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger. He said that other options include asking parliament for another loan for the jets and deducting operating costs from the purchase price, among other possibilities. Switzerland committed to buying 36 F-35As after signing a contract in 2022, with the jets expected between 2027 and 2030. However, Pfister said the defense department must now examine whether that figure is really what the country needs. Switzerland's government explained in a press release on Wednesday, that while options were on the table after failed negotiations with the US, Switzerland remains committed to procuring F-35As, citing "a significant technological advantage over other aircraft" that would help "to protect Switzerland from airborne threats." Pfister said that Switzerland must continue the procurement of the jets, or else it won't have the defense it needs by the early 2030s. The Swiss government described the US government's actions in negotiations as an "abandonment of the fixed price." It previously viewed the price as fixed at what is now $7.2 billion. In a situation without a fixed price where the cost is subject to volatility as a result of inflation and tariffs, Switzerland is unable to determine the total price of its procurement. It says that the additional costs for procuring the jet could be more than $1.6 billion, which would represent a tremendous cost growth. The government said that the unsuccessful negotiations were with senior White House representatives and that there was a conversation between Pfister and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. It said "the discussions clearly showed that the USA is not prepared to deviate from its position." The Swiss defense department was thus instructed to consider other options by the end of November, with the government saying the department "will examine whether current air defence requirements still correspond to the principles on which the evaluation of the F-35A was based." Lockheed Martin told Business Insider in a statement that "since foreign military sales are government-to-government transactions, questions about F-35 cost, schedule and procurement are best addressed by the armasuisse and US government." Switzerland is a neutral country, and while it's not a member of NATO, it is seen as a partner nation and has deepened its cooperation with the alliance since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. While it remains committed to the F-35, some US allies are no longer sure. Some wavering on the F-35 NATO member Spain said last week that it would not buy the F-35 and would instead focus on European alternatives. The country's decision came after some other allies publicly questioned the fighter jet amid Trump's treatment of allies, which has included criticizing the NATO alliance and European defense spending. Trump's approach to the alliance and questions of US reliability, amid growing security concerns, has sparked a new focus within Europe on investing in the continent's defense firms. Politicians across all of Switzerland's political parties said earlier this month that the country should withdraw or reconsider its planned purchase of F-35s in response to Trump's tariffs. So far, Spain is the only ally to formally step back from the jet, which is used by 19 US partner nations. The F-35 is a top-class fifth-generation fighter that many nations want, and any country that steps away from it after already committing to it would likely encounter huge costs and logistical issues, among other challenges. The jet's widespread use among allies and partners is also an advantage. It lets militaries operate together more easily, something that could be key in a conflict on the continent. The Swiss government noted that its desire for the jet is driven by how widespread F-35 usage is across Europe. But Europe's view of the US has changed. When asked on Wednesday if the US is seen as a reliable partner for future arms purchases, Pfister responded by saying that they are not reliable when it comes to tariffs. The depth of that concern is unclear.
