A NORTHERN Province man and his wife have appeared in court for allegedly raping a 14-year-old girl in an attempt to “teach her to be a woman”. The man, 43, and his 42-year-old wife, who is accused of holding the teenager down during the rape, were not asked to plead in the Ritavi Magistrate’s Court […]

AN Egyptian worker stabbed his employer to death, then ate his flesh and drank his blood in an old Cairo mosque after he was fired from his job renovating the holy site, police said. The 28-year-old worker was enraged at his 56-year-old employer for firing him after only a day’s work at Al-Kordi mosque and […]

HOWARD BARRELL, Johannesburg | Friday DEEP concern is spreading through the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and its parliamentary caucus over the corner into which President Thabo Mbeki has led the party and the government over HIV/Aids. Most ruling party MPs and senior ANC members approached this week privately said the HIV/Aids fiasco raised serious […]

FIRE has forced the plane of Togolese President Gnassingbe Eyadema to make an emergency landing at Niamey airport before being engulfed in flames, aviation authorities here said. Eyadema was not onboard, nor was any other Togolese dignitary. Ten people, including eight crew, were onboard, and two people were slightly injured in the incident. The aircraft […]

A SWISS judge investigating the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars to Switzerland by the regime of the late Sani Abacha has questioned his son, Mohammed Abacha. Judge George Zecchin arrived in Nigeria and met Abacha after he was flown to Abuja from Lagos where he is currently detained on unrelated murder charges. A […]

THE government in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has seized the assets of two privately run radio and television networks, one week after barring them and eight others from broadcasting. Radio Tele Kin Malebo (RTKM) and Canal Kin 1 and 2 have been put under the management of the ministry of information. An official […]

IVORY Coast’s army ruler, General Robert Guei, has pledged to restore order after an attempt to assassinate him this week and said there was no reason to delay a presidential election due on October 22. ”The elections have already been postponed once…Let no one look for any underhand reasons to push them back again or […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Nelspruit | Saturday TWO teachers, the owner of a Nelspruit panelbeating firm and five others have appeared in court at Mala in the Northern Province lowveld for robbing an American honeymoon couple and their tour guide outside the Kruger National Park earlier this month. The eight were arrested this week in a joint […]

CHARLES MANGWIRO, Quelimane | Friday THE number two leader in Mozambique’s powerful official opposition party, Renamo, has been axed for allegedly betraying party leader Afonso Dlhakama in return for financial reward from the ruling Frelimo party. Raul Domingos, Dlhakama’s right-hand man in Renamo, was formally expelled from the party by Renamo’s national council meeting in […]

BELINDA BERESFORD, Johannesburg | Friday IT’S a great mystery: why are South Africans, a group with a rich heritage of protest, not toyi-toying at the petrol pumps and causing chaos across the country, like the Europeans? After all, the British, renowned for their tolerance, have caused the Labour Party’s juggernaut to falter because of a […]