SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki and six senior ministers will travel to Japan on Sunday for a three-day state visit starting on Monday which will be aimed at boosting trade and bilateral ties. But no agreements are expected to be signed on Mbeki’s first visit as president to South Africa’s largest trading partner in Asia, […]

NIGER police have arrested two Muslim priests for sending a letter to the US embassy demanding that Washington change its foreign policy, a source said on Thursday. Sheikh Souleymane Imam Younouss (75) and 40-year-old Elhadj Boubacar Issa were arrested on Wednesday, the source said. Younouss is president of the Association for Islamic Culture and Education […]

FOLLOWING a 70% rise in deaths from malaria, the Namibian health ministry has asked parliament for an additional two million dollars to combat the disease. Petrina Usiku, the manager of the ministry’s malaria programme, said it would launch a three-month drive on Monday to spray DDT and other anti-malarial agents over almost half of the […]

SOUTH African former archbishop Desmond Tutu is due to take up a posting at Harvard University in the United States where he will teach theology. The Johannesburg-based newspaper The Star quoted Michael Duga, a former official in the Clinton administration, as saying Tutu, archbishop of Cape Town until 1995, will leave for Harvard “very soon”. […]

HUMAN rights groups welcomed a Nigerian court’s decision to acquit a six-year-old boy accused of drowning a baby, and said the case should not have been prosecuted in the first place. The child, who lives in the Dutsen Reme quarters in the town of Bakori, in Katsina state, and a middle-aged man, Sahabi Adamu, were […]

AT least three people died when a Ukrainian ship carrying Sri Lankans seeking work in Europe caught fire and sank near the entrance to the Suez Canal, Egyptian port authorities said on Wednesday. Nine people were also reported missing among the 83 who were aboard the Galak which caught fire while loading provisions at the […]

AN Mpumalanga traffic officer and a driving school owner appeared briefly in the Evander regional court on Thursday in connection with massive licence fraud. Leandra traffic officer Andrea Lourens and the owner of Ace Driving School in Springs, Lenish Moodley, are out on R5 000 bail each. Lourens is accused of issuing allegedly fraudulent drivers’ […]

HUNDREDS of thousands of people in central Mozambique, devastated by floods, face a serious threat of starvation and the situation is expected to worsen in coming months, the government said on Friday. “In a recent tour of that region we identified pockets of hunger involving about 350 000 people,” said National Disaster Management Institute (INGC) […]

THE Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) called on Thursday for the suspension of the Pretoria policemen who are alleged to have set their dogs on two Zimbabweans nationals at the weekend. Popcru said the officers’ continued presence gave the appearance that police management condoned the acts. A criminal case of assault with intent […]

Washington | Saturday AFGHAN forces captured three US “special forces” troops inside Afghanistan, a Gulf television report said on Saturday, as Washington won UN support for action against state sponsors of terrorism. Qatar’s Al-Jazeera television reported that three US soldiers and two US citizens of Afghan origin had been caught near the Iranian border carrying […]