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"Corruption and nepotism impeded community access to housing and services, and led to the collapse of some municipal governments and to widespread protests among affected communities," read a report by Amnesty International on human rights in South Africa.

It singled out as examples the withdrawal of corruption charges against President Jacob Zuma, the acquittal of Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe by the Judicial Service Commission and the appointment of Menzi Simelane as National Prosecuting Authority head.

Police actions and criminal justice also came in for scrutiny.

According to Amnesty, several accusations of torture and "extra-judicial executions" have been made against the police.

Using information from the Independent Complaints Directorate, Amnesty said deaths in custody had risen 15 percent in 2009, with KwaZulu-Natal seeing a spike of 47 percent.

It also mentioned Sidwel Mkwambi, who died in police custody in February in Bellville, Cape Town. Police claimed he jumped out of a moving vehicle.

His injuries were not consistent with this explanation. Also killed while trying to escape was an alleged car hijacker whose death did not match police reports.

Police claimed he jumped onto an electric fence, but his body showed no signs of electrocution.

Many others have complained of torture.

"Suspects in several cases were interrogated and assaulted while held without any record of arrest.

Amnesty said in its report South Africa had not ratified the United Nations' Optional Protocol Against Torture.

Unsolicited goods, services or communications
45. (1) Any person who sends unsolicited commercial communications to consumers,
must provide the consumer—
(a) with the option to cancel his or her subscription to the mailing list of that
person; and
(b) with the identifying particulars of the source from which that person obtained
the consumer’s personal information, on request of the consumer.
(2) No agreement is concluded where a consumer has failed to respond to an
unsolicited communication.
(3) Any person who fails to comply with or contravenes subsection (1) is guilty of an
offence and liable, on conviction, to the penalties prescribed in section 89(1).
(4) Any person who sends unsolicited commercial communications to a person who
has advised the sender that such communications are unwelcome, is guilty of an offence and liable, on conviction, to the penalties prescribed in section 89(1).

Now here's something you wouldn't expect. Coca-Cola is being sued by a non-profit public interest group, on the grounds that the company's vitaminwater products make unwarranted health claims. No surprise there. But how do you think the company is defending itself?In a staggering feat of twisted logic, lawyers for Coca-Cola are defending the lawsuit by asserting that "no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage."


Does this mean that you'd have to be an unreasonable person to think that a product named "vitaminwater," a product that has been heavily and aggressively marketed as a healthy beverage, actually had health benefits?Or does it mean that it's okay for a corporation to lie about its products, as long as they can then turn around and claim that no one actually believes their lies?


In fact, the product is basically sugar-water, to which about a penny's worth of synthetic vitamins have been added. And the amount of sugar is not trivial. A bottle of vitaminwater contains 33 grams of sugar, making it more akin to a soft drink than to a healthy beverage.Is any harm being done by this marketing ploy? After all, some might say consumers are at least getting some vitamins, and there isn't as much sugar in vitaminwater as there is in regular Coke.



True. But about 35 percent of Americans are now considered medically obese. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight. Health experts tend to disagree about almost everything, but they all concur that added sugars play a key role in the obesity epidemic, a problem that now leads to more medical costs than smoking.


How many people with weight problems have consumed products like vitaminwater in the mistaken belief that the product was nutritionally positive and carried no caloric consequences? How many have thought that consuming vitaminwater was a smart choice from a weight-loss perspective? The very name "vitaminwater" suggests that the product is simply water with added nutrients, disguising the fact that it's actually full of added sugar.



The truth is that when it comes to weight loss, what you drink may be even more important than what you eat. Americans now get nearly 25 percent of their calories from liquids. In 2009, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, finding that the quickest and most reliable way to lose weight is to cut down on liquid calorie consumption. And the best way to do that is to reduce or eliminate beverages that contain added sugar.
Meanwhile, Coca-Cola has invested billions of dollars in its vitaminwater line, paying basketball stars, including Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, to appear in ads that emphatically state that these products are a healthy way for consumers to hydrate. When Lebron James held his much ballyhooed TV special to announce his decision to join the Miami Heat, many corporations paid millions in an attempt to capitalize on the event. But it was vitaminwater that had the most prominent role throughout the show.
The lawsuit, brought by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, alleges that vitaminwater labels and advertising are filled with "deceptive and unsubstantiated claims."



In his recent 55-page ruling, Federal Judge John Gleeson (U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York), wrote, "At oral arguments, defendants (Coca-Cola) suggested that no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitamin water was a healthy beverage." Noting that the soft drink giant wasn't claiming the lawsuit was wrong on factual grounds, the judge wrote that, "Accordingly, I must accept the factual allegations in the complaint as true."


I still can't get over the bizarre audacity of Coke's legal case. Forced to defend themselves in court, they are acknowledging that vitaminwater isn't a healthy product. But they are arguing that advertising it as such isn't false advertising, because no could possibly believe such a ridiculous claim. I guess that's why they spend hundreds of millions of dollars advertising the product, saying it will keep you "healthy as a horse," and will bring about a "healthy state of physical and mental well-being." Why do we allow companies like Coca-Cola to tell us that drinking a bottle of sugar water with a few added water-soluble vitamins is a legitimate way to meet our nutritional needs?


Here's what I suggest: If you're looking for a healthy and far less expensive way to hydrate, try drinking water. If you want to flavor the water you drink, try adding the juice of a lemon and a small amount of honey or maple syrup to a quart of water. Another alternative is to mix one part lemonade or fruit juice to three or four parts water. Or drink green tea, hot or chilled, adding lemon and a small amount of sweetener if you like. If you want to jazz it up, try one-half fruit juice, one-half carbonated water.
If your tap water tastes bad or you suspect it might contain lead or other contaminants, get a water filter that fits under the sink or attaches to the tap.



And it's probably not the best idea to rely on a soft drink company for your vitamins and other essential nutrients. A plant-strong diet with lots of vegetables and fruits will provide you with what you need far more reliably, far more consistently -- and far more honestly.

SSDs have become cheaper over the past couple of months, and continues to drop in price. There is a lot of hype around them, that’s for sure. What’s the low down on this component? Is it really the holy grail of computers, as the techno geeks are making it out to be? Or is it yet another overpriced, under performing component that some rich Silicone Valley magnates are trying to shove down our throats?

Click through the break for the details, the lies and the promises of this new technology!

Principally used in jewelry, gold (chemical symbol Au) is also used generally in manufacturing (and by the electronics and computer industries in particular) due to its excellent thermal and electrical conductivity, resistance to oxidation, and inalterability. The computer industry uses several hundred tons (318 tons in 2003, for example) of the element every year.

The precious metal is found in almost all computer components--processors, motherboards, extension cards, memory DIMMs, and so on. Of course, the amounts used in each part are infinitesimal. But with the price of gold skyrocketing in recent years, it’s becoming more and more economically-viable to recover gold from old electronic and computer components than to mine it. That’s why specialized companies have sprung up to do just that.


Today, we're going to show you how we recovered the gold from old motherboards using do-it-yourself methods. Please note: The chemicals used in this demonstration are extremely dangerous, especially in the concentrations used. Therefore, we strongly discourage you from attempting to reproduce this experiment at home.

Gold is found in numerous places on a motherboard: IDE connectors, PCI Express slot, PCI, AGP, ISA, and other ports, jumper pins, the processor socket, and DIMM (SIMM on older motherboards) slots.


All of these connectors are often covered with a fine layer of gold a few microns thick, deposited by flashing or plating.