DENIS BARNETT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 5.00pm. WASHINGTON’s UN ambassador Richard Holbrooke will visit South Africa early next month as part of a multi-state African tour focusing on security and peacekeeping, diplomats said on Tuesday. Details of the trip are still being finalised but it will include visits to countries involved in the conflict in the […]

GHANA will meet Brazil in the semi-finals of the world under-17 soccer championship in New Zealand on Wednesday. Finalists in each of the last two tournaments, the two are facing off earlier this time because of the Brazilians’ unaccustomed second placing in Group C, won by a solid Australian team. In the other semi-final game […]

TURKEYS’s national oil and gas comany has sealed an agreement with its Libyan counterpart to explore and drill oil in the North African country. Under the agreement, the Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) will work in two of the 12 fields which Tripoli opened for exploration in 1995. The Libyan parliament is expected to ratify the […]

THE three rebel factions fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo will meet next week in an effort to resolve their differences, the leader of one of the groups said.

PHILIPE BERNES-LASSERRE, Lagos | Tuesday 3.15pm TROOPS poured into the oil-producing region of southern Nigeria on Monday in a military operation a senior official said is aimed at averting a “total breakdown of law and order”. Dozens of truckloads of heavily-armed soldiers drove into the Bayelsa State capital Yenagoa over the weekend and moved on […]

STEVEN MANN, Cape Town | Tuesday 3.45pm. THE Congress of South African Trade Union has declared war against HIV/Aids and called on the government to declare the epidemic a national emergency. “Government alone cannot win the war against HIV and Aids. Cosatu affiliates and members are in the front-line in the war against AIDS,” Cosatu’s […]

STRIKER Fary Faye scored twice as Senegal outclassed weakened Cote d’Ivoire 3-0 at the weekend in a warm-up match for the 2000 African Nations Cup. Faye from Portuguese Beira Mar club struck after 15 and 36 minutes for the Lions and Mamadou Diallo applied the final blow a minute before the final whistle in Dakar. […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Tuesday 7.45pm. BAFANA BAFANA tackle Sweden in the Nelson Mandela Inauguration Challenge in Pretoria on Saturday, and will be gunning for their first victory against a non-African side. Bafana have never put one over a European country before, even though they won the African Nations Cup in 1996, played at […]

AT least four members of Rwanda’s national football team, including its captain, have absconded in Germany, apparently in the hope of playing for professional teams in Belgium, Rwandan officials said on Tuesday. Nicholas Ntare, secretary-general of the Rwanda Amateur Football Association which is responsible for the team, said the players failed to show up at […]

THE Angolan army on Tuesday claimed to have secured the surrender of some 400 Unita rebels during fighting to recapture the southern town of Cuangar. Cuangar, on the border with Namibia, was targetted as part of the army’s strategy to block sources of supply for Unita. Reports said the 400 rebels who surrendered in Cuangar […]