LIBERIAN President Charles Taylor announced a general amnesty on Thursday for all treason suspects abroad and anti-government dissidents in the northern county of Lofa, news media reported. “On this day I announce …(I) wish to grant general amnesty to all Liberians outside of the country that have been charged with treason — from Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf […]

Cairo | Monday A COURT here on Monday rejected a lawsuit aimed at annulling the marriage of a leading Egyptian feminist on grounds she had abandoned her Muslim faith. The Cairo Family Affairs Tribunal rejected the complaint against novelist Nawal al-Saadawi, saying the lawyer who lodged it had failed to follow proper legal avenues. The […]

WAR veterans on occupied commercial farms have turned in fellow invaders to the police after discovering they are bogus ex-combatants receiving monthly gratuities for the past four years. Last week, two suspected phonies, Paul Mugwagwa and Nathaniel Sibanda, were arrested by the fraud squad after they were exposed by their colleagues in Marondera. In 1997, […]

AN Islamic court in Kebbi State, northern Nigeria, has sentenced a teenager to the amputation of one of his hands for stealing 32_000 naira (about $286) from a businessman, media organisations reported. Should the sentence be carried out, 15-year-old Abubakar Aliyu would become the first person in Kebbi to suffer amputation for theft since the […]

FIRST results from Sunday’s presidential elections on the African islands of Sao Tome and Principe pointed to a likely run-off between the two top candidates, electoral officials said. Businessman Fradique de Menezes, a former foreign minister, appeared to have an edge over Manuel Pinto da Costa, who ruled the former Portuguese colony as a Marxist […]

FIFTY-FIVE Guineans who had been abducted by Sierra Leonean rebels have arrived home with accounts of death, rape and forced labour, state television in the West African country said on Sunday. The television showed pictures of the 55 dishevelled civilians, more than a third of them children, who had been released by the Revolutionary United […]

D’ARCY DORAN, Lagos | Monday MTN will launch its GSM network in Nigeria for billed subscribers on August 8, while pre-paid subscribers will be able to join the network around August 25, company executives said on Friday. ”We really do mean business and we are ready to launch,” Brian Gouldie, chief operating officer of MTN, […]

GRIFFIN SHEA, Harare | Sunday ZIMBABWEAN police on Sunday detained for more than two hours the opposition candidate in a fiercely contested by-election, marred by widespread violence during months of campaigning. The vote to replace the late MP and minister Border Gezi, who was a close aide of President Robert Mugabe, is widely considered a […]