State to implement ruling on squatters with minimum delay and other brief reports
* Government will implement without delay a Constitutional Court order that said the state is to take steps to assist a farmer to evict 50 000 squatters from his farm at Modderklip on the East Rand, the Land Affairs Department said yesterday. Business Day
* Two men accused of killing a family for their lotto winnings which in fact they had not won have confessed to raping the eight-year-old daughter to try to force her parents to give them the money. The two, Johannes Eugene Mahlangu (33) and Johannes Fani Mtsweni (31) made a written confession in a packed Middelburg Magistrates Court yesterday. News24 * The Financial Intelligence Centre, which oversees the implementation of anti-terrorism laws in SA, says banks would be expected to stop transactions with medium-risk customers who had not verified their details from June 10. While 50% of medium-risk customers with high transactions volumes had to be re-identified yesterday, the rest had to be re-identified by September 30. Business Day * Against a background of protests against the slow pace of housing delivery, the Western Cape office of the Public Protector said yesterday a complaint had been lodged against housing MEC Marius Fransman. Business Day * The judge in the Michael Jackson child molestation case reduced one of the charges against the singer from a serious crime to a misdemeanour. Rodney Melville, a Superior Court Judge, told attorneys in the case he would reduce the charge of supplying alcohol to a minor with intent to sexually abuse him, a felony, to the lesser charge of simply supplying alcohol to a minor. The main charge of molesting the then 13-year-old cancer patient remained unchanged, as did the other charges of conspiring to commit child abduction, false imprisonment and extortion. SABC News * SAA air hostess Linda Charity Danie (26) has been released without bail after appearing in the Bellville Magistrates Court on charges of being in possession of stolen property. She will appear again on July 1. The Herald * Russian oil tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has been declared guilty of an array of charges, including fraud and tax evasion, and sentenced in a Moscow court to nine years in prison minus time served. Finance24