SOUTH AFRICA

Lopes a business student was born in the Benguela Province, Angola. She beat out about 21 others in her home country in order to represent Angola in São Paulo, Brazil.

South Africa's National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said on Tuesday it had declared a wage dispute with DRDGold , the nation's fourth largest gold producer.

The 5 ft 10 1/2 inches tall beauty is also the fourth African woman to win the title. The last African to win is Mpule Kwelagobe, Miss Universe 1999 from Botswana. Other winners came from Namibia (1992) and South Africa (1978).

South Africa's rand steadied against the dollar on Tuesday after falling more than 2.6 percent overnight, while bonds also recouped some losses although local assets remained vulnerable to renewed global risk aversion.

FirstRand, South Africa's second-biggest bank, posted a 22 percent rise in full-year earnings, buoyed by a sharp drop in bad debts, and said it would pay a special dividend.

South Africa's firebrand ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema was found guilty on Monday of hate speech for singing an apartheid-era song that called for the killing of white farmers.

South African politician Julius Malema was found guilty of hate speech charges on Monday, but the crime will do little to stop the controversial leader's rise. Malema is one of South Africa's most polarizing figures, and he may well be the country's future.

The discovery of a set of 2-million-year-old fossils could be a gamechanger in understanding human evolution, providing a key link in the process that led to modern human beings, scientists say.

An analysis of fossils that are nearly two million years old suggests that they come from a species that may be a leading candidate as an ancient ancestor to humans, say paleontologists.

Amazingly comprehensive fossils from 2 million years ago were newly discovered in South Africa, and according to new analysis, it makes the best candidate of ancestor of archaic and modern humans.

Scientists have unearthed the fossil of an ancient creature, half-human, half-ape, a discovery that could give paleoanthropologists a missing link in the evolutionary history of the human being.

Scientists in South Africa may have found the missing link in human evolution with the newly uncovered fossil of Australopithecus sediba.

A fresh analysis of nearly 2 million years old fossils of Australopithecus sediba has added to debates about the species' place in the human ancestry.

About two-million-year-old fossils of human species discovered in a South African cave in 2008 are found to be having part-human and part-ape characteristics, a recent report has revealed.

New analysis of bones that are nearly 2 million years old suggests they come from a species that may be a leading candidate for an ancient human ancestor, paleontologists say.

Origin of humans up for debate, according to new papers.

South African President Jacob Zuma appointed evangelical pastor Mogoeng Mogoeng to the Chief Justice position on Thursday. But, the choice of Mogoeng, who will now hear the country's Constitutional Court, has already sparked fury in some South Africans.

South Africa's Wesizwe Platinum will look at consolidation with neighbouring mines as it aims for full production at its new mine by 2021, its chief executive said on Thursday.

The Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) published by the World Economic Forum, which ranks the world's most competitive economies, has pushed the U.S. down the list to a No. 5 spot. Escalating government debts and declining faith of the public in its administration were cited as the critical factors that contributed to the plunge of the country which was No. 1 in 2008 and No. 4 last year.

South Africa has no plans to privatise logistics group Transnet and power utility Eskom to attract more investment and has no intention of splitting the companies, the minister of public enterprises said on Tuesday.

South Africa's rand weakened against the dollar on Tuesday, reversing earlier gains on broad-based dollar buying but could get support at around 7.16.