Duminy could miss Test series

JP Duminy (Gallo Images)

Cape Town - All-rounder JP Duminy could miss all three of the Proteas' upcoming Tests against the West Indies, Die Son newspaper reports.

Duminy is currently undergoing rehab treatment for a left knee injury.

The target for his return was initially stated as the second Test starting in Port Elizabeth on December 26, but it appears that the 30-year-old could be sidelined for the entire three-Test series.

Duminy participated as celebrity a chef on a local TV programme on Monday when he revealed that a more likely return to action would be the T20 and ODI series.

The first Test against the Windies starts in Centurion on December 17, with the series concluding in Cape Town from January 2-6.

The three-game T20 series starts on January 9. It will be followed by a five-game ODI series starting on January 16
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AS IT HAPPENED: Anni's sister - Justice system failed us

Cape Town - The sister of slain honeymoon victim Anni Hindocha says the decision to dismiss her former-brother-in-law Shrien Dewani’s murder trial will haunt their family for the rest of their lives.

Sister Ami Denborg, along with other. Members of the Hindocha family outside the Cape Town - The sister of slain honeymoon victim Anni Hindocha says the decision to dismiss her former-brother-in-law Shrien Dewani’s murder trial will haunt their family for the rest of their lives.

Sister Ami Denborg, along with other members of the Hindocha family, left the Western Cape High Court on Monday in tears following Judge Jeanette Traverso’s decision to dismiss the case against Dewani due to contradictory evidence.

And while some commentators feel Traverso was simply following the letter of the law, sister Ami feels that they have been left with only more unanswered questions.

“We waited patiently for four years to hear what really happened to Anni, and to hear the full story of what happened,” she told reporters outside the Western Cape High Court.

 “We came here looking for the truth, and all we got, was more questions.

 “We just wanted to hear all the events, and the hope of actually finding that out has kept us going as a family.

“Unfortunately, we believe that this right has now been taken away from us. Today has been really, really sad, because we never heard the full story from Shrien."

Inconsistent testimonies

The ruling by Traverso, whose stance in the trial has been called into question recently following claims of bias, came down to the inconsistent testimonies of witnesses and co-accused Zola Tongo, Monde Mbolombo and Mziwamadoda Qwabe.

Tongo is serving an 18-year jail term and Qwabe a 25-year jail term. Xolile Mngeni was serving life in jail for firing the shot that killed Anni, but died in prison from a brain tumour on 18 October, Sapa reported.

Hotel receptionist Mbolombo was granted immunity from prosecution on two charges during Mngeni's trial, but was warned he faced possible prosecution on various charges if he did not testify truthfully during Dewani's trial.

Traverso ruled on Monday that she would not grant Mbolombo immunity.

She found that the evidence presented by Tongo, Qwabe, and Mbolombo was replete with fundamental contradictions.

"I take into account that all three witnesses are intelligent and more than capable of twisting their versions to implicate the accused," she said.

"They may have been amateurs, but I do not believe any of them would have been so stupid as to commit the crimes for a few thousand rands."

Double life

Ami also addressed revelations from the case that the now-free Dewani had lied about his sexual orientation, which seemed a clear sticking point for the family as she continued her statement.

“We heard that Shrien had lived a double life, and Anni knew nothing about it,” she continued.

“We just wish Shrien had been honest with us, especially with Anni.

“The knowledge of not ever knowing what happened to my dearest little sister will haunt me, my brother, and my parents for the rest of our lives.”

The Hindocha family, though, reserved kind words for the South African public and the world at large, thanking them for all their support during what proved a short-lived trial.

“We’ve had tremendous support from the South African public, and many others around the world," she added.

“We’re grateful to all of them, and thank them from the bottom of our hearts.”

“This is a really sad day for us. And we hope that no other families ever have to go through what we’ve been through.

“We as a family will make no further comments, and respectfully ask that we be given some private space for reflection.”

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Couple Spends $50K to Choose Baby's Sex, Shining Light on Trend

Jayne and Jon Cornwill with baby Emmerson. Photo by Facebook.

Ever heard of “gender disappointment”? Jayne and Jon Cornwill certainly have. It’s what drove the Australian couple to mortgage their house, fly to California, and cough up nearly $50,000 to take advantage of technology called pre-implantation genetic screening (PGS) for a single purpose: to choose the sex of their baby at the outset of pregnancy, a practice that’s illegal in their home country.

STORY: $70K and 8,000 Miles to Become a Father

“My husband wanted a little girl that he could one day walk down the aisle. I wanted that relationship — the bond between a mother and daughter,” Jayne explained recently on Australia’s “Today” show. After giving birth to three sons, she says she suffered from “gender disappointment,” noting, “It’s like mourning the death of a child you never had” and “like any other form of depression.” In a first-person piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald, she elaborated on why she traveled to Newport Beach to see Dr. Daniel Potter, who has serviced more than 1,000 other Australian clients. She wrote, “My desire for a daughter caused me to spiral into depression and left me virtually housebound. Every time I went out, toddlers in pink seemed to taunt me.”

The story of the Cornwill’s successful quest for a baby girl has been widely covered in the Australian and British presses this week, reigniting discussion over the controversial practice of sex selection using PGS technology. The process — which can only be conducted as a part of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment — screens embryos to make sure they have the right number of chromosomes and that they are free of abnormalities that could signal disorders such as Downs Syndrome and Trisomy 18.

Baby Emmerson. Photo by Facebook.

But PGS also reveals the sex of an embryo with a nearly 100-percent accuracy rate, leading to an explosion of perfectly fertile couples opting for unnecessary IVF treatments.

STORY: Two Women Breastfeed This Baby

“Our numbers have doubled over the past ten years — and these are happy, healthy, fertile clients,” notes Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, founder ofthe Fertility Institutes, with locations in New York and Los Angeles, which pioneered the PGS-for-sex-selection practice in the U.S. He now sees about 600 non-fertility-challenged couples a year who want to choose the sex of their baby — 70 percent of which are from foreign countries where the practice is banned. Of his clients who do have a medical need for IVF, Steinberg tells Yahoo Parenting, 28 percent choose sex selection.

One IVF cycle, he says, costs $12,000; add in the sex-selection technology and it’s about $18,000 — although Steinberg stresses that his clients very rarely want the technology used solely for male-female identification. Instead, they “want it all,” meaning a thorough check that all chromosomes are normal, to make sure that none of the 400 testable disorders are present in the embryos before they are implanted into the potential mom’s womb. Those that aren’t the “right” sex, he says, can either be frozen for the couple’s own possible future use, donated to another couple, or donated to science for stem-cell research — an option chosen by “90 percent” of his clients.

When clients first meet with Steinberg for his required two-hour intake session, “they think they owe me an excuse, but they don’t,” he says. Still, reasons given by some foreign clients include needing a boy in order to receive an inheritance (in India) and wanting to avoid aborting more girls (in China). Reasons offered up by Americans are pretty much always the same. “Ninety-nine percent are doing it for ‘family balancing,’” he says.

He adds that he’s deflected a wide range of criticism over the years — for using important technology for shallow reasons, for “playing God,” and for generally going down an ethically slippery slope.

The Cornwill’s four children. Photo by Facebook.

That’s what most concerns various medical bodies, such as the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG),which opposes the use of “family balancing” sex selection on ethical grounds. It’s also a worry for Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, which examines the ethical, political, and social implications of assisted reproductive technologies. “Taken to the extreme, this would lead to an enhancement rat race, which has many larger social implications,” she tells Yahoo Parenting. “Having the desire for a girl or a boy — who can fault that? But even though our society tends to put an emphasis on individual desires, we need to think about their broader implications, as well as how they might affect our relationship with the child.”

Because, as Darnovsky notes, “If you go to a lot of trouble and expense to have a child of a certain sex, it’s probably because you have a set of expectations tied to that sex.” What if a boy wants to write poetry? What if a girl wants to play basketball? Not wear dresses? Announce that she’s transgender? “It seems to just reinforce the very rigid gender distinctions we make in this society,” she says.

The Center has myriad other concerns with the practice —women undergoing unnecessary IVF treatments, for one, which are not risk-free to either the woman or to the potential child, Darnovsky says. Because fertility technology is a “lucrative business,” she notes, it’s set competition into motion, leading to a lack of transparency about health risks, and to the growth of a largely unregulated industry. She also points out that people considering sex selection should be aware that they are doing something “that’s leading to a credible crisis in other parts of the world…by making it normalized” and contributing to dire problems from gender inequality to sex trafficking.

Still, Darnovsky acknowledges, people who want to be able to choose a baby’s sex “have a strong desire, and we should be careful about telling people what to do about family formation,” particularly sincethose who oppose abortion, she says, “have used the issue of sex selection to undermine abortion rights” because of the possibility of tossing embryos. “But it’s a question of how much do we want to normalize these kinds of things?”

There’s already an easier way to go about sex selection — during pregnancy, through a non-invasive prenatal screening, a blood test taken at around the eighth week of pregnancy to look for chromosomal abnormalities. “It is being used for gender selection,” Steinberg says. “Are women aborting based on the results? That we don’t know yet.”

Finally, ethicists fear that selecting for certain traits could lead to the actual modification of genes — something that’s not far down the pike here, Steinberg believes, considering the U.K.’s recent move toward allowing mitochondrial replacement. The technique, commonly referred to one that creates “three-parent babies,” replaces the nucleus of an egg affected by debilitating mitochondrial disease with a healthy one from a donor egg. “The nightmare scenario,” Darnovsky says, “is that we would really start engineering children.” 

But Steinberg sees such advances as a “godsend,” pleading for society to “not put handcuffs on the scientist.” The same goes for details less crucial than avoiding disease, as Steinberg is about to reintroduce a service that caused quite a stir when he first announced it back in 2009: the ability to select your baby’s eye color. “We put it on hold because there was such an outcry. Even the Vatican called [to protest],” he says. “But there is so much demand for it. We’ve got a waiting list of 70 to 80 people.” 

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LeBron James wears 'I Can't Breathe' T-shirt before game in Brooklyn

In protest of a New York grand jury's decision not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the choking death of Eric Garner,Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James wore an "I Can't Breathe" T-shirt before Monday's game against the Nets in Brooklyn. Cavs teammate Kyrie Irving joined James and several Nets players in wearing similar shirts.

Photo: LeBron James during warmups sporting the "I Can't Breathe" t-shirt. #ICantBreathepic.twitter.com/MyzNjbqy9A
— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) December 9, 2014

Nets guard Jarrett Jack provided the shirts to James and Irving,the Akron Beacon Journal reported.

“It’s more a notion to the family than anything,” James said of the shirts. “Obviously as a society we have to do better, we have to be better for one another. It doesn’t matter what race you are. It’s more of a shout out to the family more than anything. They’re the ones that should be getting all the energy and effort.”

[Adrian Wojnarowski: Adam Silver supports players' social commentary]

Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose wore an "I Can't Breathe" T-shirt during pregame warmups prior to Saturday's home game against the Golden State Warriors. When asked Monday morning by the Daily News about his fellow former NBA MVP's attire, James said, “It was spectacular. I loved it. I’m looking for one."

Jack made sure he got one. This isn't the first time James has taken a stand on racial issues. In 2012, he posted a photo to Instagram of his Miami Heat wearing hooded sweatshirts in solidarity over the shooting death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. Last year, James also coordinated Miami's decision to wear warm-up shirts inside-out in protest of then L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling's racist remarks.

Following the Ferguson ruling, James posted on his Instagram account a drawing of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin walking arm in arm. "As a society how do we do better and stop things like this happening time after time!! I'm so sorry to these families," the caption read. "Violence is not the answer people. Retaliation isn't the solution as well. #PrayersUpToTheFamilies #WeHaveToDoBetter."

Prince William and Duchess Kate Middleton are were reportedly scheduled to attend Monday's Cavs-Nets game at the Barclays Center, where protesters staged a die-in on Thursday night, so LeBron's statement could have a global reach.

Video of the incident shows Garner, an African-American, repeating the phrase, "I can't breathe," numerous times after the Italian-American police officer placed him in a chokehold in an attempt to make an arrest for the alleged sale of untaxed cigarettes. The grand jury's decision ignited protests across the country — as did a similar ruling in the shooting death of black teen Michael Brown by a white Ferguson, Mo., police officer last month — and athletes have been at the forefront of activism efforts.

Several NFL players, including St. Louis Rams guard Davin Joseph, made similar gestures on Sunday.

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Tamir Rice's teen sister 'tackled,' handcuffed after his shooting, mom says

Rice: Police threatened to arrest me

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Tamir Rice' s mother said police threatened her when she arrived at scene of son's shooting
• Tamir, 12, was shot when, police say, he reached for a toy gun in his waistband in November
• Mother tells reporters how two little boys delivered the news that police had shot Tamir
• Attorneys urge Cleveland to charge police, not follow Brown, Garner grand jury models

(CNN) -- As Tamir Rice's 14-year-old sister rushed to her brother's side upon learning he'd been shot, police officers "tackled" her, handcuffed her and placed her in a squad car with the Cleveland officer who shot Tamir, her mother and a Rice family attorney told reporters Monday.

The mother, Samaria Rice, was threatened with arrest herself as she "went charging and yelling at police" because they wouldn't let her run to her son's aid, she said.

Speaking at a Baptist church in Cleveland, Rice recalled how a seemingly normal November 22 morphed into tragedy as two Cleveland police officers pulled up to her son outside a recreation center across the street from her home. Within two seconds of exiting the police car, Officer Timothy Loehmann gunned down Tamir, 12. The boy died the next day.

Tamir was playing with a pellet gun, and a witness who saw "a guy with a pistol" told 911 twice that it was "probably" fake but that Tamir was scaring people. It doesn't appear the 911 dispatcher relayed the information to Officers Loehmann, 26, and Frank Garmback, 46.

Samaria Rice: Tamir was a bright child

Rice family pastor speaks to CNN

Video: Cop shoots boy holding toy gun

911 caller: Gun might be fake

Cops: We'll release video of shooting

Police have said that Loehmann, who has been criticized for his policing in the past, opened fire after Tamir reached for the gun in his waistband and that an orange tip indicating the gun was a toy had been removed. Rice said she didn't allow her son to play with toy guns, explaining that one of his friends had given it to him.

A harrowing knock on the door

The boy's mother recalled Monday how she got the news that the youngest of her four children had been shot.

"Two little boys came and knocked on my door and said, 'Police officers just shot your son twice in the stomach,' " she said.

At first, she didn't believe them but quickly realized they were telling the truth.

"I really thought they was playing, like joking around, but I saw the seriousness in their face, and it scared me," she said.

She ran to the scene, admittedly frantic, and arrived at the same time as an ambulance. Officers wouldn't let her check on her son, she said, "and then I saw my daughter in the back of a police car, the same one the shooter got out of." Family attorney Walter Madison said police placed Tamir's sister in the car with Loehmann.

Samaria Rice said she calmed down and asked police to release her daughter. They told her no, she said. Not only would they not release her daughter, but later, she said, they made her choose: Stay with her daughter or accompany her son to a hospital.

She chose the latter but was told she couldn't ride in the back of the ambulance with her son, so she rode in the front seat on the way to the hospital, she said.

"The treatment of the family is unacceptable," said Councilman Jeffrey Johnson, who appeared alongside the family at the news conference. "It just shows the lack of training when we shackle a grieving sister, threaten a grieving mother and not even take care of a child lying on the ground."

Cleveland police declined to discuss the family's allegations. Detective Jennifer Ciaccia told CNN, "We're really not commenting further at this point."

In a lawsuit filed last week against the city and the two officers, the family says Loehmann and Garmback "refused to provide any medical attention to Tamir for at least four minutes as he lay on the ground alive and bleeding."

Cleveland police Chief Calvin Williams has previously said that four minutes after Tamir was shot, a detective and FBI agent arrived and the FBI agent administered first aid. Paramedics arrived three minutes later, the chief said.

Attorney: Brown, Garner cases aren't templates

Attorney Benjamin Crump said the Rice family is "very distrustful" of the justice system, and in light of the grand jury rulings in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases, is demanding a transparent investigation. In contrast to the Brown and Garner cases, the family also wants the officers -- who are on paid leave -- charged before a grand jury hears the case, said Crump, who also represents the Brown family.

"There is nothing written anywhere in the law that says police officers are to be treated differently from any other citizen," Crump said. "We cannot have children playing cops and robbers on a playground and police officers coming and claiming their lives."

Tamir was by himself in a gazebo when Garmback and Loehmann pulled onto the grass alongside the gazebo and got out of their car. From the dispatcher's failure to relay the report that the gun was probably fake to the haste with which Loehmann shot the sixth-grader, Crump said "several things were done inappropriately," which is sufficient probable cause to charge the policemen.

The family attorneys also called for the ouster of Safety Director Michael McGrath and Martin Flask, executive assistant to the mayor -- a call echoing one by Councilman Johnson, who asked for their resignations in a Cleveland newspaper last week after a Justice Department report that said Cleveland police had a pattern of excessive force.

The family's primary objective, Crump said, is to "hold the killer of their child accountable."

"Tamir was a bright child. He had a promising future," his mother said, explaining that he was a talented artist, drummer and athlete.

Asked what would represent justice in her eyes, Samaria Rice replied, "I'm actually looking for a conviction."

Original Post from

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The last POW: The story of an 85-year old 'enemy spy'

Merrill Newman (back, left), pictured in with the "Kuwol Comrades," anti-communist Korean guerrillas who fought behind North Korean lines.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Former CNN correspondent looks at the case of Merrill Newman, arrested in North Korea in 2013
• Newman, who advised South Korean troops in the Korean war, was detained for months in the reclusive state
• Accused of espionage, the octogenarian had no way of knowing when -- or even if -- he would be released
• Chinoy retells Merrill's striking story in an essay, "The Last POW," with an excerpt published exclusively on CNN

Editor's note: "The Last POW," written by former CNN Senior Asia Correspondent and long-time North Korea expert Mike Chinoy, is the story of Merrill Newman, a retired Silicon Valley executive and Korean War veteran who was hauled off his plane at Pyongyang airport at the end of a tourist trip in late 2013 and detained for nearly two months. The following excerpt is from Mike Chinoy's exclusive account of Newman's ordeal, now available as a Kindle Single.

(CNN) -- After days of relentlessly questioning Merrill about his role in the Korean War, the North Korean "investigator" suddenly switched subjects.

"They started in on why I came," Newman recalled. "I said it was because I wanted to find out what was really going on in North Korea. Then they began to focus on my asking our guides to help me locate old soldiers or their relations or descendants if we got to Kuwol Mountain.

"They tried to make it into the main reason for my visit. I tried to get across that the business of me contacting people was just an aside. It was just incidental. It wasn't the main thing."

The investigator erupted. "You're lying! You're guilty of espionage. You've got to be honest with us."

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Merrill Newman is once again a free man

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"I apologized for trying to reconnect. I continued to maintain that the purpose was just to get a better understanding of North Korea. But that was the 'crime' in their eyes—illegally using the tour as a cover."

Wartime contacts

The North Koreans were particularly interested in an email that Newman had sent before his trip to his elderly wartime contacts in Seoul. The "investigator" asked about the "Kuwol comrades." Did they have an office? How big was it? How much time had Merrill spent with them?

"I was not completely forthcoming," Newman said. He sought to downplay the group and his connection to it, describing the Seoul office as small and nondescript, and lying about how much time he'd spent with the former guerrillas.

He was worried that his interrogators would realize that he wasn't telling the whole truth, but they never did.

The "investigator" also accused Merrill of "criticizing" the DPRK, referring specifically to his conversation with fellow tourist Bob Hamdrla in which he noted the resources North Korea's government wasted on monuments in such an impoverished country. Clearly, their guide Hyon-yi, who always seemed to be listening in to their conversations from her seat in the back of their minivan, had reported that comment to security officials.

'Major crimes'

In mid-November, Merrill was told again that he committed "major crimes" and that he was to prepare for a meeting with a "senior official" where he would make a formal "confession."

You make a confession because you don't have any choice. They have the key. And there isn't any duplicate.
Merrill Newman

"They said: 'This is the guy who will decide whether you stay or go home.'"

In the days before the meeting, the investigator and the interpreter made Merrill write out what he would say.

"The statement used words they dictated," Merrill said. "I did not try to tidy the language. I wanted it clearly understood [by those outside North Korea] that these were not my words, though in my handwriting."

The meeting took place on November 9, 2013, in a large room on the ground floor of the Yanggakdo Hotel, where Newman was being held.

Merrill was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, but the interpreter told him that was not formal enough, so he changed to a long-sleeved one.

Merrill was instructed to be very respectful, to stand up when the official entered the room, and then to read the statement.

The official appeared to be in his 50s, wearing a well-tailored uniform, with a serious, formal demeanor. With video cameras rolling and his hands shaking, Merrill began.

Confession?

"During the Korean War, I have been guilty of a long list of indelible crimes ... as I killed so many civilians and KPA [Korean People's Army] soldiers and destroyed strategic objects in the DPRK during the Korean War, I committed indelible offensive acts against the DPRK government and Korean people.

"Although 60 years have gone by, I came to DPRK on the excuse of the tour ... Shamelessly, I had a plan to meet any surviving soldiers ... I also brought the e-book criticizing the Socialist DPRK and criticizing DPRK.

"I realize that I cannot be forgiven for any offensives but I beg for pardon on my knees ... Please forgive me."

You're lying! You're guilty of espionage. You've got to be honest with us.
Newman's North Korean investigator

At the end of the statement, Newman bowed to the camera. He then signed it, and stamped the paper with his thumbprint.

"You make a confession because you don't have any choice," he said. "They have the key. And there isn't any duplicate."

But having now done so, he thought the North Koreans would move to release him.

"I had a calendar on the wall, and I counted those days, and I got closer and closer, I was figuring there is no way I am still going to be here for Thanksgiving."

But nothing happened. Merrill remained confined in his hotel room.

In moments of depression, Merrill began to wonder if he would ever be released.

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