ZIMBABWE?S main commercial farming union said crops planted by war veterans illegally occupying white-owned farms would not add much to the amount of food available in the country. In its latest update on the farm occupations, which started in February 1999, the Commercial Farmers? Union said haphazard illegal ploughing and planting were prevalent countrywide well […]

ZAMBIAN health authorities have withdrawn a hard-hitting anti-AIDS campaign from state radio and television after church groups said it encouraged promiscuity and moral decay. The Catholic Church and the umbrella church group Christian Council of Zambia had urged the government to withdraw the adverts, saying they were in bad taste and appeared to condone sex […]

THE editor of two banned Moroccan magazines said he would go on an indefinite hunger strike following a court’s decision to ignore his request to launch new publications. The Casablanca-based weekly newspaper Le Journal and its Arabic sister publication Assahifa, both published abroad, were banned by the government last month after being accused of destabilising […]

SOUTH African chemicals and explosives group AECI says its shareholders have approved a recommended share buy-back of 40% of its shares from Anglo American. The buy back was in line with plans by Anglo American to divest of its non-core assets. AECI shares were unchanged at R13.20. – Reuters

THE world will pay an enormous price if it ignores the plight of refugees and fails to find them homes, the new UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ruud Lubbers, has warned. He said “it would be nonsense to praise UNHCR for its care for refugees” unless the international community made “political efforts and, where […]

SOME 28_000 displaced people who have fled Angola’s ongoing civil war are living in inhuman conditions in camps at Matala, in southern Huila province, according to press reports. “It’s a desolate landscape,” said the state-run Angolan Journal in an article written by two journalists who visited the camps, around 1_000km south of Luanda. “Malnourished children, […]

TWO journalists have been arrested in Burkina Faso for investigating the death of a 12-year-old pupil shot dead in December during a demonstration quashed by paramilitary police. Germain Nama and Newton Ahmed Barry were taken in for questioning on Monday. After the death of Flavien Nebie during the protest in Bousse, some 50km outside of […]

A BUS carrying American tourists on their way back from the Kruger National Park burst into flames on the road outside Lydenburg in Mpumalanga province. Police said the tourists evacuated the bus minutes after an electrical short in the engine started the fire. The flames spread rapidly to the main body of the bus and […]