A look at South Africa's justice system

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) -- A look at the justice system in South Africa and what Oscar Pistorius faces after the double-amputee Olympic athlete was charged with premeditated murder in the Feb. 14 shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp:

---

THE BAIL HEARING

The bail hearing in the Pistorius case represents a mini-trial to determine if he will remain in custody until a trial or can be freed with conditions. Defense lawyers offered written statements from the athlete and his friends to state their case. By offering the affidavits, the defense was able to enter the evidence without having to put their emotional client, who has broken down weeping a number of times in court, on the stand. Prosecutors offered their own version of events and called the lead police investigator, Detective Warrant Officer Hilton Botha, to give testimony. But by putting Botha on the stand, they opened him up to detailed cross-examination by Pistorius' lead defense lawyer, Barry Roux. Botha has since been dropped from the case.

---

DECIDING BAIL

Pistorius faces the harshest bail requirements in South African law after the judge agreed with the prosecution's premeditated murder charge for the purposes of bail. Pistorius' lawyers must prove there is an "exceptional" reason to have him freed before trial. They also have to show that he doesn't represent a flight risk, that he will not intimidate witnesses and that he won't commit acts of violence or encourage others to do so. If Chief Magistrate Desmond Nair decides Pistorius might violate any of those terms, he can order him held until trial. If bail is denied, Pistorius can immediately appeal to a higher court. Pistorius is currently being held in Pretoria's Brooklyn police station, but those denied bail typically go to a prison.

---

JUSTICE IN SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa is one of just a few countries in the world that that has a court system that takes root in Roman-Dutch law. Because of this, those appearing in criminal trials do not have the option of a jury trial, which is common in the United States and other countries. Instead, a single judge will hear the entire case and then rule on a person's guilt or innocence. The judge can be assisted by two advisers during the trial. Those advisers generally offer assistance in looking at the more technical aspects of the evidence given at trial. If found guilty, a person can later appeal the ruling or the sentence they receive.

---

THE PENALTIES

Premeditated murder, which Pistorius is charged with, can carry a sentence of life in prison. There is no death penalty in South Africa. A lesser murder charge carries a sentence of 15 years to life. Pistorius could still see his charge downgraded to culpable homicide, meaning that he unintentionally killed Steenkamp, which is what he claims. A conviction on that charge carries much less time in prison.

Source: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OLY_PISTORIUS_SHOOTING_SOUTH_AFRICAN_JUSTICE?SITE=KGO&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

there will be blood there will be blood nigel barker 420 secret service fenway park philadelphia flyers

Military-base civilians face furloughs

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20130221/NEWS01/302210033/1006/rss01/Military-base-civilians-face-furloughs

larry brown thomas kinkade pat summit brewers matt cain adastra holocaust remembrance day

Apple supplier Foxconn places hiring freeze on its largest plant

Thursday, 21 February, 2013

' $("#util_Login").html(toBeAppendded); $(".ldap_iframe").html(""); setCookie("ldap_rdtc","",-1); } else { var ldap_remember = getCookie("ldap_remember"); var ldap_rdtc = getCookie("ldap_rdtc"); if(ldap_remember == "enable") { if (ldap_rdtc == 1) { setCookie("ldap_remember","",-1); setCookie("ldap_rdtc","",-1); $("#util_Login").html(''); $("#util_Login").attr("id","util_Logout"); } else { setCookie("ldap_rdtc",1,1); window.top.location.href = 'http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/ldap/regen.php?goto=/breaking-news/companies-world/apple-supplier-foxconn-places-hiring-freeze-its-largest-plant-20130220'; } } else { setCookie("ldap_rdtc","",-1); $("#util_Login").html(''); $("#util_Login").attr("id","util_Logout"); } } }, complete:function(){}, error:function(xhr, status, error){ var ldap_remember = getCookie("ldap_remember"); var ldap_rdtc = getCookie("ldap_rdtc"); if(ldap_remember == "enable") { if (ldap_rdtc == 1) { setCookie("ldap_remember","",-1); setCookie("ldap_rdtc","",-1); $("#util_Login").html(''); $("#util_Login").attr("id","util_Logout"); } else { setCookie("ldap_rdtc",1,1); window.top.location.href = 'http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/ldap/regen.php?goto=/breaking-news/companies-world/apple-supplier-foxconn-places-hiring-freeze-its-largest-plant-20130220'; } } else { setCookie("ldap_rdtc","",-1); $("#util_Login").html(''); $("#util_Login").attr("id","util_Logout"); } } }); function getCookie(c_name) { var i,x,y,ARRcookies=document.cookie.split(";"); for (i=0;i

Source: http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/breaking-news/companies-world/apple-supplier-foxconn-places-hiring-freeze-its-largest-plant-20130220

jfk airport faith hill metro north taco bell taco bell Breezy Point Seaside Heights

Haunting, rare images depict WWI devastation

TORONTO, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Canada's Rebecca Marino, a rising star in women's tennis, stepped away from the sport in search of a normal life on Wednesday, weary of battling depression and cyber-bullies. Ranked number 38 in the world two years ago, the 22-year-old admitted she had long suffered from depression and was no longer willing to make the sacrifices necessary to reach the top. "After thinking long and hard, I do not have the passion or enjoyment to drive myself to the level I would like to be at in professional tennis," Marino explained in a conference call. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/photos/haunting-rare-images-depict-wwi-devastation-slideshow/

2012 oscars the shore meryl streep oscar wins sasha baron cohen oscars oscar winners the artist sacha baron cohen oscars

Italy's centre-left moves to reassure doubters

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's centre-left moved on Tuesday to quash fears that it will form a weak government after next weekend's election, saying it was committed to rapid economic reform and that outgoing premier Mario Monti must have a frontline political role.

"We are fully aware that inertia is not an option. We have no time to waste. Italy's problems are very serious and we cannot afford more recession or stagnation ... we need to deliver in terms of jobs, income, simplification," said Stefano Fassina, chief economic official in the centre-left Democratic Party.

Although markets have remained largely sanguine about the result of the February 24-25 vote, there have been rumbles this week about the chances that it will bring instability or a weak, left-leaning government unable or unwilling to carry out the difficult reforms needed to make Italy competitive.

A centre-left coalition headed by Democratic Party (PD) leader Pier Luigi Bersani is widely expected to win the vote and the most recent polls show it 4-5 points ahead of Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right.

But pollsters expect Bersani to fall short of a controlling majority in the Senate, which has equal law-making powers to the lower house, forcing it to seek support from Monti's centrists and raising the specter of a government split by disputes.

Fassina, who comes from the PD's left-wing, dismissed these fears and the suggestion that Monti, the technocrat who led Italy out of a major financial crisis last year, would refuse to ally with a centre-left coalition because of the suspicion it would be dominated by trade unions and leftists.

Monti, who is struggling to attract votes in the centre, said in an interview with Rome's Il Messaggero daily on Tuesday: "We have nothing in common with the left-wing coalition."

He has repeatedly urged Bersani to drop leftist ally Nichi Vendola of the small Left, Ecology and Freedom (SEL) party.

But Fassina told Reuters in an interview: "I guess that Monti, like us, wants to do something positive for this country. If we do not have a majority and Monti can provide the numbers for forming a stable government, why wouldn't he do it? What is the alternative? Another election in a couple of months?"

SAVIOUR

He added: "It would be difficult to explain to the rest of the world that the savior is not providing support for forming a government."

Fassina said the centre-left would seek an alliance with Monti to strengthen the government and reassure markets even if it had a majority by itself.

Despite Monti's lackluster political campaign, Fassina said the outgoing premier, "is an asset for Italy so in one way or another he should stay in the front line." Monti replaced Berlusconi in November 2011 as Italy slid towards a perilous debt crisis.

Fassina said the problems around an alliance stretching from Vendola to Monti "are enormously exaggerated," adding that Vendola had signed a pact to follow majority decisions in the coalition, in which the PD would be dominant.

"Vendola is not the extremist that people like to describe for electoral purposes," Fassina said, referring to the openly gay poet's 7-year tenure as governor of the southern region of Puglia where he has been widely described as a moderate. "There is a pretty good track record," Fassina said.

He added that he was less worried about Vendola than the danger that Monti would not get enough votes to help the centre-left form a majority because of the rise of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and Berlusconi's centre-right, describing them both as "populist forces"

Beppe Grillo, the 5-Star leader, has been boosted by a wave of recent corruption scandals and is now running third on close to 20 percent according to polls, well ahead of Monti.

But Fassina added: "Our feeling is that with Monti we will have a majority in the Senate large enough to have a stable government, this is what we understand from the latest polls."

He said the centre-left believed the most urgent reform in Italy was to streamline a notoriously bloated and inefficient public sector, address rampant corruption and transform a byzantine system of justice that causes years of delays in civil as well as criminal cases, a major disincentive to investment.

He said a plethora of local, central and regional authorities had caused paralysis and created hundreds of small and inefficient companies providing local services. The centre-left would close many of these companies and merge others.

Despite the feeling of many senior businessmen that reforming the labor market is the most urgent measure for a new government, Fassina said existing legislation was in line with the European average.

However, he said Monti's labor reforms had failed to close the gap between highly protected older workers and young people on precarious temporary contracts. The PD would encourage permanent contracts by cutting tax costs for companies.

Fassina said Berlusconi would try to retain enough influence to protect his personal interests through blocking anti-trust and anti corruption legislation and preventing an extension of the statute of limitations that has saved him in several fraud trials.

But if a stable government was formed after this election, Berlusconi would be marginalized and lose leadership of his People of Freedom party (PDL) within two years.

(Writing by Barry Moody; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/italys-centre-left-moves-reassure-doubters-162418870--business.html

vanessa bryant Prince Harry naked Prince Harry Vegas Melky Cabrera Mayim Bialik Rich Kids of Instagram felix hernandez

Israel's Netanyahu makes first move for new government

Last updated at 6:35 am

Hello, '+data+'

'); //session extend only for non protected pages $(".ldap_iframe").html(""); } else { //get remember cookie var ldap_remember = getCookie("ldap_remember"); if(ldap_remember == "enable") { //check if user logout sucessfully before. if no counter found, proceed var ldap_remember_counter = getCookie("ldap_remember_counter"); if(typeof ldap_remember_counter === "undefined") { //once redirect create counter cookies to prevent for infinite looping createCookie("ldap_remember_counter","enable",24); window.top.location.href = "http://www.straitstimes.com/ldap/regen.php?goto=/breaking-news/world/story/israels-netanyahu-makes-first-move-new-government-20130220"; } else { //logout not clean up eraseCookie("ldap_remember"); eraseCookie("ldap_remember_counter"); $('#header_ajax').html('

Wednesday, 20 February 2013

Last updated at 6:35 am

'); } } else { $('#header_ajax').html('

Wednesday, 20 February 2013

Last updated at 6:35 am

'); } } }, error:function(xhr, status, error) { var ldap_remember = getCookie("ldap_remember"); if(ldap_remember == "enable") { var ldap_remember_counter = getCookie("ldap_remember_counter"); if(typeof ldap_remember_counter === "undefined") { createCookie("ldap_remember_counter","enable",24); window.top.location.href = "http://www.straitstimes.com/ldap/regen.php?goto=/breaking-news/world/story/israels-netanyahu-makes-first-move-new-government-20130220"; } else { eraseCookie("ldap_remember"); eraseCookie("ldap_remember_counter"); $('#header_ajax').html('

Wednesday, 20 February 2013

Last updated at 6:35 am

'); } } else { $('#header_ajax').html('

Wednesday, 20 February 2013

Last updated at 6:35 am

'); } } }); }); function eraseCookie(name) { createCookie(name,"",-1); } function createCookie(name,value,days) { if (days) { var date = new Date(); date.setTime(date.getTime()+(days*24*60*60*1000)); var expires = "; expires="+date.toGMTString(); } else var expires = ""; document.cookie = name+"="+value+expires+"; path=/"; } function getCookie(c_name) { var i,x,y,ARRcookies=document.cookie.split(";"); for (i=0;i

Source: http://straitstimes.com.feedsportal.com/c/32792/f/640961/s/28bde118/l/0L0Sstraitstimes0N0Cbreaking0Enews0Cworld0Cstory0Cisraels0Enetanyahu0Emakes0Efirst0Emove0Enew0Egovernment0E20A130A220A/story01.htm

i will always love you whitney houston 2012 grammy awards powerball results pebble beach golf beverly hilton roland martin whitney houston dead at 48

South Korea mostly suicide-free for U.S. troops

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2013/02/gannett-skorea-mostly-suicide-free-for-soldiers-021813/

By Gregg Zoroya - USA Today
Posted : Monday Feb 18, 2013 12:45:24 EST

Even as the Army recorded its worst year in decades for soldiers killing themselves ? with 323 deaths in 2012 ? there were places in the service where suicides are rare.

One is South Korea, where among the nearly 20,000 GIs stationed there last year, there was one suicide: a soldier hanged himself. Leaders there say they are encouraging troops to seek help and to look out for one another, and that effort is paying off.

Last December, Army Spc. Andrew Korpash, 26, who is stationed near the Korean demilitarized zone, contacted a chaplain about desperate text messages another G.I. sent after being jilted by a woman. ?The thing that got my attention was the actual list of ways he would do it (commit suicide),? said Korpash, a Korean language linguist. ?That?s when it seemed like it was pretty serious to me.?

But there is another reason that underscores how U.S. troops die by suicide: the use of firearms. In South Korea, troops are effectively barred from keeping private firearms because of strict national gun control laws.

?Most soldiers in the military, the majority, commit suicide through firearms,? said Maj. Gen. Edward Cardon, commander of 2nd Infantry Division and some 10,000 soldiers in South Korea. ?So the restrictions on firearms is clearly a factor (in reducing the deaths).?

Military research shows that guns are involved in 61 percent of service member suicides ? personal firearms in three out of four of those cases. Gun suicides are even more prevalent in the Army, where suicide rates rose to 29 per 100,000 last year, above the pace of suicides in the public.

A soon-to-be published study by the Pentagon?s National Center for Telehealth and Technology asserts there is a gun culture among those who volunteer to serve and acknowledges the difficulty of restricting personal firearms, despite evidence that it could reduce suicides.

In Israel, which has tough restrictions on personal firearms, the Israeli Defense Force changed policy in 2006, prohibiting troops from taking their service weapons home on weekends. Suicides dropped 45 percent, according to a 2010 study.

American troops anywhere in the world are heavily restricted on registration and storage of personal firearms while living on U.S. military bases. But that uniformity ends when the issue is off-base housing.

Troops overseas must abide by the restrictions of host nations, according to military policy. Accordingly, U.S. troops in South Korea, Germany, Italy and elsewhere are virtually without access to personal firearms.

Suicides have been fewer among those troops.

Last year, there were three Army suicides among the 25,000 soldiers posted in Germany, one among 19,200 in South Korea and none in Italy, where 3,900 soldiers are based.

Meanwhile, U.S. bases often see double-digit suicides each year. There were a dozen among the 30,000 GIs at Fort Campbell, Ky., last year; 17 at Fort Hood, Texas, which has 46,500 soldiers; and 10 among the 20,000 G.I.s at Fort Stewart, Ga., according to Army statistics.

?The takeaway message is we have to do everything we can to limit access to firearms by someone who is depressed, they?re suicidal, struggling with thoughts of self harm,? said Robert Gebbia, executive director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. ?It?s just good common sense.?

Among 2nd Infantry Division soldiers in South Korea, Cardon said he has pushed beyond the issue of personal firearms to training soldiers like Korpash to intervene when signs of suicide emerge. Last year, 26 of his soldiers helped to stop a suicide from happening.

?They tell us everyone is responsible to recognize it when you see it,? said Korpash, of Flower Mound, Texas, who received an Army achievement medal for stopping a suicide.

The 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea reported that suicide attempts fell from 56 in 2011 to 36 last year.

?I?m not going to rest on this,? Cardon said. ?The piece I really focus on is what we call collective responsibility. If something doesn?t look right next to you, ask the question. Don?t wait.?

Videos You May Be Interested In

Source: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2013/02/gannett-skorea-mostly-suicide-free-for-soldiers-021813/

breaking dawn part 2 Jennifer Lacy Honey Baked Ham hostess israel AMA BCS Standings 2012