South Africa is the new Miss Universe

South Africa's Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters is Miss Universe 2017!

French beauty queen Iris Mittenaere turned over her crown to Demi-Leigh on Monday morning at The AXIS Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, United States.

 The 22-year-old beauty queen ended the 39-year title drought of South Africa.

Demi-Leigh is only the second South African to take home the crown after Margaret Gardiner (1978).

Demi-Leigh is a graduate of Business Management at North West University. Her passion is to train women in self-defense.

Miss Colombia is first runner-up, while Miss Jamaica is second runner-up.

Miss Philippines Rachel Peters bowed out early, failing to make it to the Final Five.


Congratulations! — Jannielyn Ann Bigtas/LA, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

Three-million-year-old child skull had no soft spot – study

WASHINGTON - A three-million-year-old child's skull uncovered in South Africa has no signs of the kind of soft spot that would be seen in human children with larger brains, a study said Monday.

The findings are the latest contribution to long-running debate over whether the Taung Child fossil may have represented the earliest signs of a fusing skull.

Babies today are born with a number of plates in their skull that are loosely joined, forming soft spots that eventually come together.

Scientists believe we evolved this trait to accommodate our growing brain, which since the age of the Neanderthals has been larger than the brains of earlier human ancestors.

The Taung Child was uncovered 90 years ago in South Africa and some researchers thought the skull showed the first signs of such skull adaptation in a hominid known as Australopithecus africanus, which lived 2.1-3.3 million years ago.

For the latest study, researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand, Columbia University and Florida Atlantic University used high-resolution computed tomography to look at each layer of the skull.

"According to the authors, the results as well as comparisons with the hominin fossil record and chimpanzee variation do not support the hypothesis that the features evolved in A. africanus or early Homo hominins," said the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The advanced scans revealed more detail about the edges of what some scientists have believed were skull plates.

"The borders are not as sharp as one would expect" if there had been a soft spot, or anterior fontanelle, it said.

Furthermore, since the child was estimated at three to four years old, an open soft spot "would be extraordinarily rare" and the fossil was "well beyond the age" at which that would typically close, between three and nine months in modern babies.

The Taung Child has long been seen as the first and best example of early hominin brain evolution. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

South Africa buries ‘greatest son’ Mandela

QUNU, South Africa - South Africa held a state funeral for Nelson Mandela on Sunday, closing one chapter in its tortured history and opening another in which the multi-racial democracy he founded will have to discover if it can thrive without its central pillar.

The Nobel peace laureate, who was held in apartheid prisons for 27 years before emerging to preach forgiveness and reconciliation, was honoured with ceremonies that mixed military pomp with the traditional rites of his Xhosa abaThembu clan.

The funeral drew 4,500 guests, from relatives and South African leaders to Britain's Prince Charles, American civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson and talk show host Oprah Winfrey.

"The person who is lying here is South Africa's greatest son," Cyril Ramaphosa, deputy leader of South Africa's ruling African National Congress party who was acting as one of the masters of ceremonies, said as the service got under way.

Fellow anti-apartheid veteran Archbishop Desmond Tutu was also among those who arrived shortly after dawn at a vast, domed tent erected in a field near Mandela's home, having resolved a last-minute mix-up over his invitation.

As Mandela's flag-draped coffin was borne from the house on a gun-carriage, a battery of cannons positioned on the hillside fired a 21-gun salute, sending booms echoing across the sun-drenched valley.

The coffin was followed into the huge tent, decked out inside in black, by Mandela's grandson and heir, Mandla, and South African President Jacob Zuma.

It was then placed on black and white Nguni cattle skins in front of a ring of 95 candles as the service started with a choir singing Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika, the evocative national anthem adopted after the end of apartheid in 1994.

Mandela died in Johannesburg on Dec. 5 aged 95, plunging his 53 million countrymen and millions more around the world into mourning, and triggering more than a week of official memorials to the nation's first black president.

As many as 100,000 people paid their respects in person at his lying in state at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, where he had been inaugurated as president, an event that brought the curtain down on more than three centuries of white domination.

When his body arrived on Saturday at his ancestral home in Qunu, 700 km (450 miles) south of Johannesburg, it was greeted by ululating locals overjoyed that Madiba, the clan name by which he was affectionately known, had "come home".

"After his long life and illness he can now rest," said grandmother Victoria Ntsingo, as military helicopters escorting the funeral cortege clattered overhead.

"His work is done."

"Don't call me"

Mandela served just one term as leader of Africa's biggest and most sophisticated economy, and formally withdrew from public life in 2004, famously telling reporters at the end of a farewell news conference: "Don't call me, I'll call you."

His last appearance in public was at the 2010 World Cup final in Johannesburg's Soccer City stadium, waving to fans from the back of a golf cart.

Yet such was his influence as the architect two decades ago of the historic reconciliation between blacks and whites that his passing has left a gaping hole in the heart of South Africa.

With an eye on elections in five months, the ruling ANC, the 101-year-old former liberation movement Mandela once led, has seized on his death as a chance to shore up popularity that is ebbing even in its black support base.

The strategy has not been without its risks, not least because it has highlighted the gulf in stature between South Africa's first black president and its fourth, the scandal-plagued Zuma.

It backfired spectacularly at a mass Mandela memorial at Soccer City on Tuesday when Zuma, under fire for a $21 million security upgrade to his private home, was booed and jeered in front of world leaders including US President Barack Obama.

But barring an upset next year, Zuma looks set for another five years in office, during which he will have to address an economy struggling to shake off a 2009 recession and the fragmentation of a vital ANC alliance forged with the unions in the common struggle against apartheid.

With unemployment at 25 percent and racial inequality still painfully evident - the average white household earns six times more than the average black one - pressure for radical economic transformation is only likely to increase.

Against that backdrop, the party is desperate for strong and decisive leaders to guide South Africa through the myriad complexities of the 21st century global economy and allowing it to claim what it believes is its rightful place at the world's top table.

Both inside and outside the party, there are doubts whether Zuma, a polygamous Zulu traditionalist with no formal education, is the right man for the job.

"We need to raise the level of leadership," former president Thabo Mbeki, who was unceremoniously ousted by Zuma as ANC leader six years ago, said in eulogies to Mandela last week.

"The transformation of South Africa is a very difficult task, I think in many respects more difficult than the struggle to end the system of apartheid." — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

'Blade Runner' Pistorius charged with murdering girlfriend

South African "Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who became one of the biggest names in world athletics, was charged on Thursday with shooting dead his girlfriend at his home in Pretoria.

Police said they had opened a murder case after a 30-year-old woman was found dead at the track star's house after an incident in the upmarket Silverlakes gated complex on the outskirts of the capital.

"At this stage he is on his way to a district surgeon for medical examination," police brigadier Denise Beukes told reporters outside the heavily guarded residential complex.

Pistorius and his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, had been the only people in the house at the time of the shooting, Beukes, said, and witnesses had been interviewed about the incident, which happened in the early hours of the morning.

"We are talking about neighbors and people that heard things earlier in the evening and when the shooting took place," she said. Earlier, police said a 9mm pistol had been found at the scene.

"When a person has been accused of a crime like murder they look at things like testing under the figure nails, taking a blood alcohol sample and all kinds of other test that are done. They are standard medical tests," Beukes said.

Pistorius is due to appear in a Pretoria court after 1200 GMT.

Before the murder charge was announced, Johannesburg's Talk Radio 702 said the 26-year-old may have mistaken Steenkamp for a burglar.

South Africa has some of the world's highest rates of violent crime, and many home owners have weapons to defend themselves against intruders, although Pistorius' complex is surrounded by a three meter high wall and electric fence.

In 2004, Springbok rugby player Rudi Visagie shot dead his 19-year-old daughter after he mistakenly thought she was a robber trying to steal his car in the middle of the night.

VALENTINE'S DAY

Steenkamp, a model and regular on the South African party circuit, was reported to have been dating Pistorius for a year, and there had been little to suggest their relationship was in trouble.

In the social pages of last weekend's Sunday Independent she described him as having "impeccable" taste.

"His gifts are always thoughtful," she was quoted as saying.

Some of her last Twitter postings indicated she was looking forward to celebrating Valentine's Day on Thursday with him.

"What do you have up your sleeve for your love tomorrow???" she posted.

However, Beukes said the police were aware of previous incidents at the house of a "domestic nature", and recent media interviews with Pistorius revealed he kept an assortment of weapons in his home.

"Cricket and baseball bats lay behind the door, a pistol by his bed and a machine gun by a window," Britain's Daily Mail wrote in a profile published last year.

He was arrested in 2009 for assault after slamming a door on a woman and spent a night in police custody. Family and friends said it was just an accident and the charges were later dropped.

Steenkamp's colleagues were distraught.

"We are all devastated. Her family is in shock," Steenkamp's agent, Sarita Tomlinson, told Reuters, in tears. "They did have a good relationship. Nobody actually knows what happened."

TRACK STAR

Pistorius, who races wearing carbon fiber prosthetic blades after he was born without a fibula in both legs, was the first double amputee to run in the Olympics and reached the 400 meter semi-finals in London 2012.

Respected worldwide for triumphing over his disabilities to compete on a level playing field with able-bodied athletes, his sponsorship deals are thought to be worth $2 million a year.

In last year's Paralympics he suffered his first loss over 200 meters in nine years. After the race he questioned the legitimacy of Brazilian winner Alan Oliveira's prosthetic blades, though he was quick to express his regret for the comments.

Pistorius is sponsored by British telecoms firm BT, sunglasses maker Oakley, sports apparel maker Nike and French designer Thierry Mugler.

"We are shocked by this terrible, tragic news. We await the outcome of the South African police investigation," a BT spokeswoman said before Pistorius was charged.

A Nike spokesman in London said before hearing of the murder charge that the company was "saddened by the news, but we have no further comment to make at this stage".

Pistorius also has a sponsorship deal with Icelandic prosthetics manufacturer Ossur.

"I can only say that our thoughts and prayers are with Oscar and the families involved in the tragedy," Ossur CEO Jon Sigurdsson told Reuters. "It is completely premature to discuss or speculate on our business relationship with him."

Neighbors expressed shock at the arrest of a "good guy".

"It is difficult to imagine an intruder entering this community, but we live in a country where intruders can get in wherever they want to," said one Silverlakes resident, who did not want to be named.

"Oscar is a good guy, an upstanding neighbor, and if he is innocent I feel for this guy deeply," he said. - Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com