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

SOUTH Africa’s Rand Merchant Bank, one of the country’s four main banking groups, said this week that Michael Pfaff had been appointed chief executive officer in place of Paul Harris. Pfaff, 39, is a chartered accountant with more than 10 years of experience in investment banking who had joined RMB in 1997. Harris, 50, would […]

JEREMY LOVELL, Cape Town | Thursday WITHIN five years, one South African will die of an Aids-related illness every minute unless action is taken now to curb Aids and treat its victims, says a leading insurance industry official. ”By 2005 there will be six million people infected with HIV/Aids and there will be more than […]

THE Zambian government will need at least $534m over the next three years for its HIV/Aids intervention programme, President Frederick Chiluba said this week. Spearheading the plea for donor funds, Chiluba said Zambia was in a “desperate situation”, adding that the amount of money appeared colossal, but it reflected the complexity and magnitude of the […]