Yearly Archives: 2001

ETHIOPIA has appealed for 470 000 tonnes of food aid to feed some 6.2 million people expected to be affected by drought this year. But the number of people reliant on food aid has dropped substantially from 10.5 million last year because of recent rain, said the commissioner of the state-run Disaster Prevention and Preparedness […]

THE National Directorate of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) will take over the running of the Witness Protection Programme from the Department of Justice, says the unit’s head Bulelani Ngcuka. The effectiveness of the WPP has been questioned following the recent assassination of two witnesses in the programme. They were due to give evidence in the urban […]

SWAZI farmers are selling beef from foot-and-mouth areas to smugglers, threatening to spread the disease to Mozambique. Mozambique, which has remained clear of the disease, banned all beef imports from Swaziland and South Africa in December, shortly after foot-and-mouth was detected in its southern African neighbours. Swaziland farm ministry sources said meat was being smuggled […]

REPRESENTATIVES from Cameroon, Malawi, Niger and Guinea-Bissau will this week renegotiate their debt with the Paris Club group of creditor countries. All four African countries are on the list of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) identified by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank for special consideration in debt relief if they demonstrate […]

A JUDICIAL panel of inquiry into the finances and management of Nigeria’s corruption ridden state-run telecommunications company NITEL has begun its public sitting. The panel, headed by former high court judge Daniel Ishola-Adeniyi, will look into the finances and management of NITEL and its sister company, M-TEL, in the past years. NITEL is widely considered […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Tuesday OPPOSITION parties have slammed African National Congress (ANC) members of Parliament’s public accounts committee for backtracking on their call for the involvement of the Heath unit to help investigate the governments R43bn arms deal. The Democratic Alliance (DA) and African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) charged the ANC members with […]

A JAILED Guinean opposition politician has begun a hunger strike to press for his release after serving a two-year prison sentence which ended last month. Antoine Soromou is a friend and political ally of the main opposition leader Alpha Conde, head of the Guinean People’s Rally (RPG), who is also behind bars. Soromou was convicted […]

A YOUNG Egyptian woman is filing for divorce after she woke up from a New Year’s drinking binge to find herself married, the daily Al-Akhbar newspaper reported. A Cairo court was told the unidentified woman had gone out drinking with friends from work on New Year’s Eve and had no recollection of having married one […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Tuesday A GROUP of Pretoria businessmen accused of selling more than 700 dud computers to the Mpumalanga government could lose the plush mansions they bought with the proceeds of the dirty deal. Police confirmed that the Asset Forfeiture Unit has been brought on board to seize the properties in Pretoria and […]