AT least 24 people were killed when a boat carrying illegal immigrants capsized off the Comorian island of Anjouan on Tuesday night, officials said. The immigrants were sailing to the French-ruled island of Mayotte. Six others in the boat survived the accident. Each year thousands of people attempt to cross the 50km stretch of sea […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Wednesday MURDER charges have been dropped against the Zimbabwean war veteran alleged to have shot dead a white farmer, David Stevens – ostensibly for “lack of evidence”. Stevens, an outspoken supporter of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was the first of six white farmers killed in more than nine […]

THREE people accused of painting a 14-year-old girl white after accusing her of shoplifting will be tried in the Louis Trichardt Regional Court in March next year. Former Pep Stores manager Thelma Strydom and two colleagues, Julia Munyai and Albert Mbezi, have not been asked to plead on charges of assault, theft and crimen injuria. […]

SOME 400 Rwandan children who took part in the 1994 genocide have gone to camps for two months of UN-backed re-education before their release, Justice Minister Jean de Dieu Mucyo said this week. Their training, financed by UNICEF (the UN Children’s Fund), includes civics lessons and workshops on justice and human rights. Between 2 000 […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday POTIONS made of bark and crushed leaves are being used successfully to treat infections plaguing Aids victims in Tanzania’s Tanga region, a Commonwealth conference on phytomedicines has heard. American David Scheinman told delegates from Africa and Europe a German doctor had stumbled on the benefits of the traditional medicines […]

THE Nigerian justice minister has been asked to explain the “abduction” of a businessman to the United States at the request of the US drugs agency. The lawyer of Lanre Shittu, a prominent car dealer, asked the Federal High Court in Abuja to summon minister Bola Ige to explain why the government allowed the US […]

HUMAN rights activists and opposition parties have called for the immediate resignation of Malawi’s Electoral Commission chairman Judge James Kalaile after he tried to dismiss massive voter apathy as “nonsense”. Kalaile said the turnout of only 14,2% of Malawi’s 5,2 million voters in the country’s first ever multi-party local government elections last month was better […]

THE ruling Avant-Garde for Madagascan Renewal (AREMA) has emerged victorious in most cities except the capital after weekend polls for new provincial administrations. Turnout in Sunday’s proportional representation elections, which will eventually lead to the creation of six provincial governments after more than a century of extreme centralism, was about 30%. Results out so far […]

ANNA BORZELLO, Gulu | Wednesday HUNDREDS of colleagues and friends of Matthew Lukwiya, the doctor who led the fight against Uganda’s outbreak of Ebola, laid him to rest, with some wailing, others weeping, but none of them holding hands or embracing. Such is the virulence of Ebola that Lukwiya’s pallbearers wore protective masks, gloves, caps […]