OWN CORRESPONDENT, Noupoort | Thursday A TEENAGER from Moreleta Park in Pretoria has died in a “detention camp” at a Christian care centre in Noupoort for drug and alcohol addicts, apparently after being chained by his neck in a disciplinary cell, Beeld newspaper reports. The centre, run by clergymen, has accused the police of “unprofessional […]

THE Anglo American-Oppenheimer family deal to delist South African diamond giant De Beers is a “wonderful opportunity for South Africa,” South African Reserve Bank (SARB) Governor Tito Mboweni said on Thursday. Speaking on independent radio station 702, Mboweni said that the SARB would buy as much of the $3.5bn inflows as possible and would use […]

TIMBER production in Congo is expected to reach 850_,000 tons this year as compared with 650_000 tonnes in 2000 because peace has returned after years of civil war, a top forestry official said on Wednesday. The forecast of a 200_000 ton rise in production is based on resumed logging in the central Niari and Lekoumou […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Windhoek | Thursday NAMIBIAS politically influential Council of Churches (CCN) wants to meet President Sam Nujoma after he called Christianity a “foreign philosophy”, the council’s general secretary said on Wednesday. The CCN’s request comes after a recent meeting between Nujoma and farmers where he also accused 19th century Finnish missionaries to the desert […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Thursday SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki’s office has rejected criticism of the president’s leadership and his policies on race, Aids and Zimbabwe by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The institute, in a report issued in London, said Mbeki’s ”shaky stewardship” of South Africa had helped to create a ”regional leadership […]

SOUTH Africa’s High Court on Wednesday approved a scheme of arrangement for holders of diamond giant De Beers’ first preference shares, the company said in a statement. The court order followed a vote on May 4 by first preference shareholders who approved an offer from the Anglo American-led consortium bidding for De Beers. The consortium […]

KENYAN police have arrested more than 1_000 people and shot dead four armed suspects since the weekend in a crackdown on rising crime in Nairobi, a senior police official said on Tuesday. Five guns, 19 rounds of ammunition and stolen items, including three cars, have been recovered from the suspects during the operation, which began […]

NINE armed bandits were killed Monday and one was injured and captured during a camel-back clash with police in West Sudan’s remote Darfur State, a Khartoum newspaper reported on Tuesday. Reporting from Darfur, Al-Rai Al-Aam daily quoted Kabkabiya province commissioner Hassan Kuna Azraq as saying the police force retrieved 25 cattle looted by the gangsters […]

LIBYAN leader Colonel Muammar Gadaffi has told German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s chief foreign policy adviser, Michael Steiner, that Libya was behind the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco in which three people were killed, the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Tuesday. The newspaper reported that a law practice which represents survivors of the attack […]