Baku | Wednesday DRUG trafficking from Afghanistan has increased since the start of the US-led military strikes there, Russian Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov said on Tuesday during a meeting with his Azeri counterpart. ”Since the beginning of military operations in Afghanistan, drug traffickers have been trying to increase the volume of narcotics smuggled in (from […]

Pretoria | Monday HOPES for an interest rate cut received a boost on Monday with a 3,5% point drop in the money supply. Should South Africans receive a one percent rate cut it will give them the lowest interest rate since 1986 — just in time for Christmas. The SA Reserve Bank (SARB) reported that […]

MORE than 180 mini bus taxis were impounded around the Umtata region over the weekend as part of efforts to root out taxi-related violence. The area head of crime prevention, Director Wayne Hackart said the taxis were impounded mainly for defects and in some cases for loading passengers at taxi ranks that had been closed […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]