London | Friday A HANDFUL of US special forces are operating in southern Afghanistan, a senior US government official confirmed today amid growing indications that the campaign’s ”ground phase” was close to beginning. The official said that a small number of US forces were supporting efforts by the intelligence community to undermine the Taliban regime. […]

THE youngest son of philanthropist and businessman Anton Rupert, 49-year-old Anthonij Rupert, died in a car accident in Cape Town on Sunday, SABC television news reported. Rupert, who was travelling alone, apparently lost control of the vehicle in stormy weather in Franschhoek Valley. Rupert was well known in the international wine industry as owner of […]

SUSPECTED war veterans and the police are impounding maize from travelers from rural areas, and ordering them to sell it to the Grain Marketing Board (GMB). Passengers and bus conductors yesterday complained of police harassment, saying the maize they carried was in small quantities and had been given to them by their relatives in the […]

INVESTIGATIONS into thousands of criminal cases at Windhoek’s main police stations have ground to a standstill, while others are moving at snail’s pace, because only three vehicles are operational in an area with more than 200 000 inhabitants. One of the excuses given by the National Police Headquarters for the long-running transport problem is that […]

A SENIOR Western Cape government official has been suspended after a forensic audit found sacked Cape metro mayor Peter Marais’s son is unlawfully occupying a low-cost government house in Cape Town. Grant Marais is one of 135 tenants unlawfully living in housing built for poor whites in Parow Park, northern Cape Town, in the mid-1970s. […]

MORE than 100 people died in weekend riots in the northern Nigerian city of Kano sparked by a Muslim rally against US-led reprisal attacks on Afghanistan, the Nigerian Red Cross said on Tuesday. “The number of dead people cannot be ascertained by the Red Cross but it is safe and reliable to quote a figure […]

PRESIDENT Sam Nujoma has picked the coastal town of Henties Bay as the place to retire to, and is building a luxury house on the sea front. The President’s love of fishing appears to be the main motivating factor behind his decision. Nujoma apparently plans to spend summer at the beach-front house and the six […]

AT least 15 people have contracted anthrax in central Zimbabwe, the state-run Herald reported, apparently after butchering infected cows. The disease which has spread fear through the United States because of its use as a biological weapon periodically breaks out in Zimbabwe, where it can naturally spread from cattle to people. The former white-minority government […]

MORE than 5 000 Egyptians gathered after prayers at the al-Azhar mosque, Egypt’s largest, to vent their anger Friday against the United States and Britain. “Down with the United States, down with Britain. Long live the Muslims,” chanted the demonstrators, who included representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood and of the Nasserite movement who had arrived […]