OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Thursday A SOUTH African farmers’ union has urged its members to improve their markmanship to counter continuing attacks by criminals. “We are encouraging farmers unequivocally to behave as if a national state of emergency is in place,” the Transvaal Agricultural Union said in a statement. Latest statistics show that 88 South […]

EMSIE FERREIRA, Johannesburg | Thursday CHILD sex trafficking – with children as young as four – is on the rise in South Africa, driven by deepening poverty that sometimes sees a family force a child into prostitution as its only source of income, says a report released this week. The report says there are an […]

FLIES and black cockroaches, possibly attracted by corpses of victims of Angola’s civil war, are invading the central Angolan town of Cuito, state-run radio reported. Health authorities fear residents who have survived the warfare could suffer new problems caused by the insects, the report said. A group of experts has launched a study into the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Thursday THE Denel group this week an agreement in Kuala Lumpur with the government of Malaysia for the supply of artillery systems to the Malaysian armed forces. The contract, valued at $50m, provides for delivery of 22 units of the South African-developed 155mm 45-calibre G5 Mark 3 towed artillery system, along […]

RESEARCHERS say they have discovered traces of cocaine in 4000-year-old Egyptian mummies, which they call evidence of contact with American cultures centuries before Christopher Columbus. The decade-long study languished “under pressure from people with obscure interests who don’t accept changes in the interpretation of history,” researcher Svetlana Balabanova said from Frankfurt, Germany. Cocaine is synthesized […]

THREE men cut off an aspirant sangoma’s testicle and left him lying in agony in the veld for three nights. Chuchi Ronald Maluleke, 32, was undergoing training as a sangoma in the Northern Province when he was attacked when he went to relieve himself on Friday night. Two held him down while the third cut […]

AT least 95 people have died of yellow fever in an epidemic that broke out in central Guinea last month. The epidemic is centred in Mamou, 280km east of the capital Conakry, and has spread to Labe and Koubia in the same region, the relief agency Hopital Sans Frontiere (Hospital Without a Border) said. Yellow […]

FIFTY people have been killed and several injured in a clash in central Chad over a land dispute, sources in the Chadian capital N’Djamena said. The clash occurred this week between two ethnic groups in Djedda, some 350km northeast of the capital in Batha Province. A source close to the interior ministry said the dispute […]

LUCIA MUTIKANI, Johannesburg | Thursday SOUTH African builders expect the industry to expand by at least 3.5% over each of the next three years, but warn that Aids could cut demand for housing in half by 2010. ”The building industry can look forward to a significant period of sustainable growth,” said Building Industries Federation of […]

SOUTH African ferrochrome producers face higher power prices as state-owned utility Eskom is deregulated and electricity contracts are no longer linked to published ferrochrome prices, industry consultant Andrew Jones of Mineral & Market Connections said this week. – Reuters