A TENTH state in northern Nigeria has adopted strict Islamic law, or Sharia, banning the sale of alcohol and introducing severe punishments for a range of crimes, officials of the northern state of Bauchi said. Officials said the new legal code would apply only to Muslims and be used to try cases of alcohol use, […]
TUBERCULOSIS in Malawi has shot up massively from only 5_000 cases in 1995 to almost 30_000 last year. National TB Programme Manager Dr Felix Salaniponi says the lung disease currently kills 25 Malawians each day, and that the deaths were most likely linked to HIV and Aids. The twin epidemic of Aids and TB was […]
SOMALI faction leaders have called for a reconciliation conference that would include all Somali factions and regional administrations. The current Transitional Government (STG), the warlords said, should attend as one of the factions. Somali factions warlords Musa Sudi Yalahow, Hussein Mohamed Aidid and Osman Hassan Ali “Atto” announced that they had “definitely resolved” their differences, […]
A SCHOOLBOY has been jailed for eight years for setting alight an agricultural college in Mpumalanga. Sicelo Mthembu, 18, of Vosloorus in Gauteng, was in Grade 8 at Mathews Phosa College near Nelspruit when he set the school on fire after the college director reprimanded him in the dining hall for misbehaving. The school lost […]
ASSAAD ABBOUD, Cairo | Thursday AN Egyptian court has sentenced a Saudi princess to three years’ hard labour in her absence on for a million-dollar jewel theft, in yet another brush with the law for her Cairo-based family. Central Cairo’s Abul Ela correctional court announced that it had also handed three years’ hard labour to […]
THE US Export-Import Bank is ready to provide up to $250m in loans, guarantees and insurance to help Ghana acquire US-made medicine and equipment to combat HIV and AIDS. The agreement is part of a S1bn Ex-Im Bank program established last July to back Africa’s fight against HIV/AIDS. Ghanaian Health Minister Dr Richard Anane, who […]
EMSIE FERREIRA, Johannesburg | Thursday FIVE people have died at the hands of vigilantes in as many days in Johannesburgs townships as mob justice becomes an increasingly familiar sight in crime-weary South African communities. A newspaper picture published this week of a naked, dying man and an angry mob summed up the scale of the […]
CRIS CHINAKA, Harare | Thursday ZIMBABWE remains poised on the brink of a new political crisis as Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay seems set to defy an order by President Robert Mugabe’s government to take early retirement. The confrontation between Gubbay and Mugabe was set to peak at midnight on Wednesday, when the government said it […]
SOUTH African financial services group FirstRands headline earnings per share for the six months to December 31 rose to 30.9 cents from 24.5 cents, just short of expectations. It said its interim headline earnings rose to R1.685bn from R1.336bn due to the positive impact of restructuring. The bank said its cost-to-income ratio for the period […]
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