FORTY police and thirty demonstrators were slightly hurt on Wednesday night in clashes during a protest by young members of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority outside the Coptic cathedral in Cairo, police said. Coptic youth have been protesting since Sunday over the newspaper publication of a graphic story about a defrocked monk’s alleged sexual affairs in […]

ANTONY BARNETT and STEFAANS BRMMER, Johannesburg | Friday FOR thousands of years, members of Southern Africa’s Kung tribe have eaten the Hoodia cactus to stave off hunger and thirst on long hunting trips. The Kung people – a subdivision of the San – used to cut off a stem of the cactus about the size […]

NIGERIAN nurses on Wednesday threatened to go on strike next week to protest what they called government preferential treatment of doctors. Their representative, Nwogu Nwogu, said that the government has for too long paid attention to doctors at the expense of other health workers, and nurses will go on strike from Monday to protest this […]

NEXT month’s Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit in the Zambian capital of Lusaka will focus on the continent’s economic challenges, a Zambian official said Wednesday. “This summit will not strive to settle wars of liberation” but would herald a “new era where economic problems will be taken up,” Sikota Wina, an emissary of Zambian […]

BELINDA BERESFORD, Johannesburg | Friday THE cost of curbing the worldwide HIV/Aids epidemic in lower-income countries will soar almost fivefold by 2005, reaching an estimated $9,2-billion, compared to current expenditure on the disease of about $1,8-billion. This compares with the estimated $20-billion a year that the United States alone spends on Aids domestically. This forecast […]

Cape Town | Friday SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday a government minister will meet with the main shareholder in South African Airways to settle a row, which analysts see as a threat to the country’s privatization programme. Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe will meet on Saturday with the board of Transnet, […]

TWENTY years after his violent death at the hands of Islamic extremists for making peace with Israel, former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s life is being revived on cinema screens across the country. “The Days of Sadat,” which follows his evolution from revolutionary to president of the republic, opens this week to Egyptian audiences who five […]

SUDANESE Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail tried to reassure Canada’s Talisman oil company on Thursday, saying his government appreciates its efforts in oil operations and services to people around the oilfields, in remarks to the press. He said the government had not received official word from Talisman that it was planning to sell its shares in […]

POLICE in northern Tanzania were holding 17 people on Wednesday and had seized nine tonnes of marijuana, state-owned radio Tanzania reported on Wednesday. Quoting regional police commander Paul Ntobi in Mara, the radio said that the suspects were arrested in four villages, following a swoop launched after a tip-off by local citizens. Ntobi said some […]

THE Nigerian police have handed over more than 80 Black Maria vans to the prison service in an effort to end delays in the trial system, police said on Wednesday. For years, the judiciary has complained of the failure of the police to bring trial suspects to court for hearings. The prison service says it […]