GERMAN narcotics police last month strangled a Nigerian immigrant apparently suspected of dealing drugs in Dusseldorf, a press report said. John Amadi, who had lived in Germany for five years, was trying to swallow some packets of cocaine when the police held his throat until he died. The paper quoted an unnamed Libyan national who […]

IRWIN ARIEFF, United Nations | Tuesday THE United Nations says it will capitalise on a lull in fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo by sending a smaller peacekeeping force than it had planned to the vast central African nation, but deploying it far faster. Jean-Marie Guehenno, the undersecretary-general in charge of peacekeeping, said the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday AN unrepentant safety and security minister Steve Tshwete has met with Portugals ambassador to South Africa, Manuel Rodrigues Perreira, following a growing row between South Africas Portuguese community and the government over crime. The fracas has seen South Africa’s acting ambassador to Portugal called to the Portugese foreign ministry in […]

ARCHEOLOGISTS have found the tomb of a high priest of a renegade pharaoh which may help them determine whether his monotheistic-type cult was practiced widely in Egypt. A Dutch-Egyptian team excavating in Saqqara, just south of Cairo, last week found the tomb belonging to Meri Aten, a high priest under the pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled […]

Sizwe samaYende, Lydenburg | Monday AN Mpumalanga farmer will be the first in South Africa to have his land expropriated after he refused to sell his land to the government for R840_000 so that it could be given to a dispossessed community. The legal team for land and agriculture minister Thoko Didiza is preparing to […]

A SOUTH African court has withdrawn charges against seven vagrants accused of raping and robbing a Brazilian journalist because she failed to appear at the hearing. The reporter had been in South Africa for barely a day, in July 1999, when she was allegedly attacked on her way to her Johannesburg hotel. She left South […]

SOUTH African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) chairman Barney Pityana has appealed to President Thabo Mbeki to intervene to save Marietta Bosch from being hanged in Botswana, The Sunday Independent newspaper reports. Bosch, on death row in Gaborone, is facing the gallows for murdering her best friend so that she could marry her husband. “In our […]

NIGERIAS highest court has approved a death sentence against a man for killing his pregnant wife on suspicion her unborn child was the result of an affair. The Supreme Court of Nigeria confirmed the death sentence passed by a high court in Ijebu Ode in Ogun State that Pius Nweke be hanged for killing his […]

SUSAN NJANJI, Harare | Tuesday ZIMBABWES government has stepped up its campaign to drive senior members of the country’s judiciary off the bench, accusing judges of bias in favour of whites and the opposition. The first casualty was chief justice of the Supreme Court Anthony Gubbay, who last week was asked to retire early. Two […]

A BANGLADESHI court has ordered the immediate release of a young Nigerian languishing in jail since 1992 after being sentenced to a two-month term. Despite the High Court order, Goddyu Ochendo’s release from Dhaka’s Central Jail could take a few more days while Nigerian diplomats prepare his travel document and ticket for a flight back […]