Cape Town | Tuesday WHILE there had been a significant strengthening of English and a mild growth in the use of Xhosa, a mild to strong decline had been noted in the use of Afrikaans in the Western Cape provincial government. This is one of the observations in an executive summary of the Western Cape […]

Luanda | Tuesday SEVEN people were killed in an ambush in Angola blamed on Unita rebels on Monday, Catholic radio reported, the first such attack since a ceasefire agreement reached just two days ago. Another four people were injured in the attack on a truck travelling in the central southern province of Huambo, the Ecclesia […]

Lusaka | Wednesday WARRING parties in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are due to meet in Lusaka on Wednesday in a bid to assist the long-running talks in South Africa, which have stumbled over key issues. The crucial summit on Wednesday will among other things review progress made in the implementation of the 1999 […]

Cape Town | Tuesday POLICE officers ”lost” 1448 case dockets last year, says Safety and Security Minister Steve Tshwete. In written reply to a question in the National Assembly, he said 47 of these were murder dockets. Among the reasons given by Tshwete for lost case dockets, were that they ”are lost at court or […]

Pretoria | Thursday THE State on Wednesday asked for the conviction of five Noordelikes rugby players charged with murder and attempted murder, arguing that the five had acted with a common purpose. State prosecutor Annemarie Schutte argued the State had proven the guilt of Riaan Botha, Kobus Joubert, Ben Korff, Francois Velloen and Corne Kloppers […]

Lagos | Monday IN DOZENS of accounts set out in a new report released on Monday, survivors of a Nigerian army massacre in which more than 200 civilians died last October detail the full horror of the gruesome killings. Starting on October 22, and lasting for two days, the army launched a reprisal operation against […]

Strange and worrying things are happening in the village of Mamvuka, in Limpopo’s rocky Nyhelele Valley. Mamvuka’s folk scratch out their survival, making do with what they’ve got: a strip of mealies here, a plot of cabbages there, and that ubiquitous of African domestic animals, the goat.

Ramallah | Saturday PORN movies and programmes in Hebrew are being broadcast by Israeli troops who have taken over three Palestinian television stations of Ramallah, irate residents of the besieged West Bank town said on Saturday. The offices of three local television and radio stations were occupied by soldiers on Friday morning, a few hours […]

Washington | Saturday NINE senior al-Quaida members have been killed and three captured since the beginning of the US-led war in Afghanistan, The Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing unnamed government officials. But the tally leaves the whereabouts of another 15 on the Pentagon’s list of most-wanted terrorist leaders still unknown to US authorities, according […]