Cape Town | Thursday THE South African Navy icebreaker Outeniqua was racing Wednesday to remote Marion Island, 1_100km southeast of Cape Town, to aid two seriously ill members of a weather service expedition, officials said. The icebreaker, expected to arrive late Friday or early Saturday, has a fully equipped hospital on board, complete with operating […]

IRIN, City | day NIGERIA plans to launch the largest Aids treatment program in Africa using cheap generic drugs on 1 September, AP reported on Tuesday. Stephen Lewis, the special envoy of Secretary-General Kofi Annan for HIV/Aids in Africa told a press conference on Monday that the Nigerian government’s commitment demonstrates that efforts are under […]

FINANCE and economic experts in Malawi on Wednesday took President Bakili Muluzi’s government to task over the suspension of a four-year-old program to privatise some 100 loss-making parastatals. The Malawi cabinet last week suspended the much vaunted privatization program without giving a reason. “The general public want an explanation from government because there are still […]

SUDAN’S health ministry has sent an emergency medical team to the city of Port Sudan on the Red Sea after around 40 people died of sunstroke there during a heatwave. Health minister Ahmed Bilal Osman said in a statement that 38 people, most of them elderly, had died from the heat out of a total […]

UNITED NATIONS Secretary-General Kofi Annan named former Ugandan Health Minister Crispus Kiyonga as head of the transition team for the UN-brokered Global Aids and Health Fund on Monday. Kiyonga, who until last week oversaw what many observers consider to be “one of Africa’s most effective AIDS-prevention campaigns,” will head a group charged with determining how […]

OVER 2_500 residents of the northern Ethiopia border town of Himora have been displaced from their homes following the overflowing of the Tekeze river, Ethiopia radio reported on Monday. This flooded parts of the town, forcing residents to flee to higher ground. The river forms part of the common border between Ethiopia and Eritrea until […]

Cape Town | Wednesday A JUDGE on Tuesday ruled that an English court order forcing foreign journalists in South Africa to hand over video footage of a vigilante lynching was invalid. Cape Town High Court Judge Jeannette Traverso found that international news agencies Reuters and Associated Press (AP) did not have to submit video footage […]

TALKS between representatives of Burundi government and those of the rebel CNDD-FDD were on Friday adjourned till August, SAPA reported. It quoted South African deputy president, Jacob Zuma, who mediated the talks as expressing optimism about the outcome of the talks. He told journalists that another round of talks would be held at a venue […]