ROSE-MARIE BRUBALLA AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday SOUTH AFRICA’S elite Scorpions crime-fighting unit has joined the hunt for a ship that may have brought a potentially disastrous livestock disease into the country, a government official said. The move comes as government officials fight to contain the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that could cost South […]

GRAVE robbers have dug up the bones of a former deputy minister of the apartheid regime to create a powerful “cure” for Aids, the Sunday Times newspaper reported. “All that is left of Hannes Rall, a deputy minister of transport in the apartheid government, are a few bones in a plastic bag at a police […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Maputo | Monday NEARLY 100_ 000 Mozambican families in areas affected by the devastating floods earlier this year will get a new lease of life when the country’s agricultural authorities start handing out seed kits for the coming planting season. Already dozens of trucks loaded with seeds imported from neighbouring South Africa and […]

A COUPLE have been publicly flogged in Nigeria’s northwestern Zamfara state for failing to prove their allegations that the Islamic head of the village had sex with their daughter, a court official said. Haruna Dutsi and his wife, Aishat, were given 80 strokes of the cane each in a public spectacle in the village of […]

BLOODY attacks attributed to armed Islamic militants in Algeria multiplied last week, with local media reporting nearly 40 killings, as fears of a resurgence in violence haunted the country. Most of the attacks took place in the Mitidja region, the fertile agricultural plain near the capital and former stronghold of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Sunday IN the latest twist to a confusing series of claims and counter-claims between Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and police over a hand grenade attack on the party’s headquarters, a Harare policeman has appeared in court for his alleged involvement in the bombing. Lazarus Nkomo, who is said […]

ANC Women’s League president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has denied newspaper reports claiming that a Chinese beer company is to sponsor her birthday party to the tune of R350_ 000 in a so-called “cash-for-contacts” deal. The Sunday Times said the “cash-for-contacts” deal by Tsingtao Beer was put together by a promotions company owned by Madikizela-Mandela’s daughter, Zinzi […]

AFP AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Baghdad | Monday IRAQI President Saddam Hussein has taken delivery of a copy of the Koran he ordered written in his own blood to thank God for escaping unscathed from his long political career. The special edition of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, took three years to finish and was […]

RESCUE workers are continuing to work around the clock in a bid to free two miners who have been trapped underground since Friday following a rockfall at the Kloof Gold mine outside Carltonville on the West Rand. A mine official said proto teams had not managed to make contact with the men and that the […]

DAVID MAGERIA, Nairobi | Saturday NINE out of the 20 members of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa(COMESA) have promised to join a regional free trade area when it is launched at the end of next month, say officials. COMESA’s Secretary General Erastus Mwencha said the FTA programme was ”firmly on course” and […]