ZIMBABWES tobacco farmers will from next week start to benefit from a 20% foreign currency retention scheme which is expected to allocate them US$80-million from this year’s tobacco crop. Tobacco remains a major foreign currency earner for the cash-strapped government. Now, of the forex that is earned through sales, 20% will be reserved for growers […]
AN Egyptian man went on trial in Cairo on Sunday on charges he had one more than the Muslim legal limit of four wives and that he had entered brief marriages with 29 underage girls. The trial was adjourned until August 18 for Sayed Ragab al-Sawarki, 51, a self-professed devout Muslim who was arrested in […]
SOUTH African IT group Datatec said on Tuesday it had upped its stake in US unit Westcon to 90,2%, to allow for management changes ahead of Westcon’s planned listing in the United States. Datatec said it paid $22-million, funded from internal cash resources, to the original founders of Westcon and some other shareholders for the […]
MARJORIE OLSTER, United Nations | Tuesday THE United Nations is prepared to start setting up a Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal after donor nations pledged nearly enough money for its first year of operations, even though contributions for the second and third years have fallen short. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called on the donors […]
SOUTH Africa’s biggest fuel retailer Engen said on Tuesday that production of petroleum products had resumed at its refinery in Durban. ”Quantities of finished product will increase over the next few days and the refinery is expected to be producing at full capacity by the end of the week,” Engen said in a statement. The […]
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Johannesburg | Sunday SOUTH Africa’s favourite church leader and veteran fighter against apartheid, Desmond Tutu, on Saturday celebrated the 25th anniversary of his consecration as a bishop, with tributes pouring in from around the world. Speaker after speaker at a packed St Mary’s cathedral in downtown Johannesburg paid tribute to Tutu, who turns 70 in […]
THREE former Rwandan officials were arrested in Europe on Thursday on suspicion of crimes committed during the 1994 genocide, said the chief prosecutor of the UN tribunal for Rwanda Carla del Ponte. Emmanuel Rukundo, a former chaplain in the Rwandan army, was arrested in Geneva, while Emmanuel Ndindabahizi, a former finance minister, was arrested in […]
A TOP US aid official will launch a seven-day mission in Sudan on Sunday to assess efforts to battle famine in parts of the country ravaged by drought and devastated by civil war. Andrew Natsios will travel in northern and southern Sudan and meet government officials and aid workers, the US Agency for International Development […]
Johannesburg | Monday THE chief whip of South Africa’s ruling party on Sunday denied any wrongdoing in a controversial $5,5-billion arms deal, saying he was the victim of an unsubstantiated witchhunt. In a full-page advertisement published in the Sunday Independent, Tony Yengeni said a claim that he received a luxury 4X4 Mercedes Benz in return […]