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Facebook to raise $10 billion in IPO

Facebook unveiled plans for the biggest ever Internet IPO that could raise as much as $10 billion, but made it clear CEO Mark Zuckerberg will exercise almost complete control over the company, leaving investors with little say.

The Harvard dropout, who launched the social networking phenomenon from his dorm room, will control 56.9 percent of the voting shares in a company expected to be valued at up to $100 billion when it goes public. Facebook says it has 845 million active monthly users.

Wednesday's long-awaited filing kicks off a process that will culminate in Silicon Valley's biggest coming-...

Razor-blade accused get bail

Five men accused of cutting a 62-year-old woman's throat with a razor blade were released on bail in a Limpopo court, according to a report on Thursday.

Beeld newspaper said the five men, accused of assaulting Anita Jacobs-Van Niekerk in her home, were granted R3000 bail each in the Naboomspruit Magistrate's Court on Wednesday.

Lerato Nkumane, 26, Willy Baloyi, 28, Ben Maake, 32, Frans Mokonyane, 27 and Jonathan Mathovela, 26, stand accused of stealing her handbag and withdrawing R7000 cash from her bank account after forcing her to give them her PIN.

Mokonyane was believed to have done gardening...

Challenge to schools: Embracing digital textbooks

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Are hardbound textbooks going the way of slide rules and typewriters in schools?

Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski on Wednesday challenged schools and companies to get digital textbooks in students' hands within five years. The Obama administration's push comes two weeks after Apple Inc. announced it would start to sell electronic versions of a few standard high-school books for use on its iPad tablet.

Digital books are viewed as a way to provide interactive learning, potentially save money and get updated materia...

Crime and its reality in Africa

South Africa is the most interesting country in the world to live in. For almost eight years I lived in Paris and I could stroll to the Louvre, the Picasso Museum, buy cheap tickets at the Bastille Opera for what was then about R50, browse dozens of interesting little bookshops with names like "Letter tree", "Foam of the pages", "Doodles", and so on. Unlike Anglo-American bookshops that contain mostly a mixture of bestselling trash and classics, the French love their quirky essays and novels by eccentric authors teeming with wayward knowledge and ideas.

I also attended lectures or ran in...

Dutch teen sailor completes solo world tour

Dutch teen Laura Dekker on Saturday became the youngest sailor to complete a solo circumnavigation of the world, a year after going to court for the right to make the attempt.

The 16-year-old completed her solo round-the-world journey when she sailed into harbour on the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten at 3:00 pm (1900 GMT).

Dekker, who left the island nearly a year ago to the day -- January 20, 2011 -- beat the previous record by some eight months.

As she turns 17 on September 20, she had to complete her journey before September 16 to beat the record for the youngest sailor to make an unas...

Bahrain spirals into violence

Bahrain has spiraled into escalating violence on the streets in recent days, several weeks after an independent commission report into last year's v...

UJ stampede victim's sons urged to study hard

South African Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande urged the son of the woman who died in a stampede at the University of Johannesburg to study ...

The Cuban occupation of South Africa

The announcement last week that Cuban military personnel would be sent to South Africa to train the ANC's army has caused grave concern among the Afri...

Mbeki on Twitter and Gaddafi

Former president Thabo Mbeki said on Monday he was sceptical about Twitter being a great conveyor of reliable knowledge.

Mbeki said in response to a qu...

New CEO at the SABC

Lulama Mokhobo has been appointed the SABC's new group CEO, the communications ministry said on Monday.

"After a recommendation by the South African B...

China's internet users rise to 513 million

An industry group says China's number of Internet users has surged past 500 million and is still growing strongly.

The China Internet Network Informati...