ANOTHER four people have died of cholera in South Africa, bringing to 50 the death toll since the outbreak of the epidemic in mid-August, health officials said this week. A total of 9 824 cases of cholera, including 264 at the weekend, have been diagnosed in KwaZulu. The latest victims were two girls aged six […]

FORMER senior Malawian cabinet minister Brown Mpinganjira, sacked last month by President Bakili Muluzi, has been arrested on corruption charges after allegedly authorising payments to “ghost contractors” when he was education minister several years ago. Mpinganjira, 50, was widely tipped to succeed Muluzi as leader of the governing United Democratic Front (UDF), but was abruptly […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Luanda | Thursday THE Angolan government has vehemently denied that the country’s official diamond trader has been buying gems from the rebel Unita movement, which is at war with the regime. A Portuguese daily claimed that the Angola Selling Corporation (ASCORP) has been trafficking in diamonds bought from traders supporting the rebels. “It […]

ABOUt 30 people are feared dead after a bus plunged into the River Nile in central Uganda. Police said the bus was travelling from the northwestern district of Arua to Kampala when the accident happened. A rescue team, including several divers, was flown to the scene. Most of the passengers were residents of Kampala returning […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kiev | Thursday UKRANIAN authorities have refused to comment on the sale of a pontoon bridge which is at the centre of a major corruption scandal involving the president of the island nation of Madagascar. Senior Madagascan MP Jean-Eugene Voninahitsy was this week jailed for 11 months after he claimed that President Didier […]

SUSPECTED Muslim fundamentalists clad in military uniforms slit the throat of a young Algerian cabaret singer and kidnapped six people from a discotheque where she was performing, the press reported. The singer known as Sihem, 24, was thrown to the ground by two of the attackers who on Friday stormed the nightclub at Berrahal, where […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday AFRICAN diamond producer Namibian Minerals Company (Namco) says South Africa’s latest development in underwater diamond technology, the MV Ya Toivo, has proved “extremely” successful in recovering the precious stone off the Namibian coast. Designed by Namco’s engineers and built in South Africa, the R42m diamond mining ship set sail […]

HUNDREDS of women in the northern Nigerian city of Kano were expected to spend the next few days in detention after a crackdown ordered by religious officials, police said Sunday. A policemen in Kano, the largest city in northern Nigeria, confirmed that more than 200 women had been arrested in the past week after being […]