A SAUDI Arabian group is to invest $100m in building four luxury hotels in the Moroccan holiday resort of Agadir. The hotels will be built by Saudi Sheikh Salah Kamile’s Dalla al Barraka group and operated by one of its subsidiaries. An investment deal is due to be signed this week. The deal is the […]

JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Monday SELF-CONFESSED fraud and controversial Mpumalanga youth leader James Nkambule, who has starred prominently in every major scandal in the province over the past five years, has again foiled Premier Ndaweni Mahlangu’s attempts to oust him from government. Nkambule and three other senior local government officials are back at work after […]

UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Ruud Lubbers has called upon the Guinean government to ensure the safety of tens of thousands of refugees trapped by fighting in the region. The former Dutch prime minister arrived in Guinea at the weekend to begin a tour of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia to assess the plight […]

FRENCH mercenary Daniel Clerino has been quietly released from jail in the Comoros, where he was held for 11 months in connection with a coup bid last March, and has left for his home in Reunion, an officer at the jail said. Clerino was accused of involvement in an abortive coup on March 21 last […]

A FIVE-day workshop aimed at finding new ways to clip the wings of west and north Africa’s destructive migratory-locust swarms has begun here, a UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) official said. The workshop will discuss the implementation of the Emergency Prevention System (EMPRES) for Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases in west Africa, […]

ISLAMIC extremists slaughtered 26 people overnight near the town of Berrouaghia, south of Algiers, residents in the area said. The massacre took place in a shantytown called Cherata some 120km south of Algiers in an area where extremists of the hardline Armed Islamic Group (GIA) are active. Twenty-two bodies were found at the scene, most […]

IMPALA Platinum Holdings (Implats), the world’s number two platinum producer, posted record half-year profits on strong metal prices and a weak rand, briefly boosting its share to a new high. Implats said diluted headline earnings per share, which excludes exceptional items and their tax effects, were R33.63 in the six months to December 31, 2000, […]

GABONESE President Omar Bongo has accepted an invitation by the mediator in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ketumile Masire, to help the peace process. The development came just days ahead of a summit planned in the Zambian capital Lusaka bringing together all the warring parties in the DRC – Angola, Zimbabwe […]

TELECOMS consortiums, including the state-run firm Celcom, have paid over $1bn for four mobile phone licences in Nigeria. Three foreign-backed consortiums, including MTN Nigeria, each paid the asking price of $285m a licence within the requisite 14 days since an auction held here last month by the state-run telecoms regulatory agency, the National Communications Commission […]