CATHERINE Bertini, the United Nations secretary-general’s special envoy, has arrived in Nairobi for an updated assessment of the drought now threatening 14 million people in the greater Horn of Africa region. Bertini, executive director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), is visiting Kenya and Ethiopia, the two worst-affected countries in the region. Large areas […]

THE central bank of the West African CFA franc zone, the BCEAO, has cut its 2000 forecast for real GDP growth in the region to 3.2% from 5.0%. That compared with real growth of 3.4% in 1999, the Senegalese-based bank said in a statement. It said growth within the West African Economic and Monetary Union […]

AFP, Gusau, Nigeria | Saturday THE governor of a Nigerian state where strict Islamic law against prostitution and other vices has been introduced has distributed more than $400000 to prostitutes to discourage them from soliciting. Northwestern Sokoto state governor Attahiru Bafarawa said the amount, distributed to more than 100 beneficiaries, was part of efforts to […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT and AFP, Sydney | Sunday SOUTH Africa has produced a major upset, shocking Brazil 3-1, to draw level on points with the South Americans in Group D of the Olympic men’s football tournament. Substitute Siyabonga Nomvethe, who missed a string of chances in last Thursday’s defeat at the hands of Japan, rose to […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kampala | Sunday DELEGATES at a controversial Aids conference in Uganda have called for the suspension of HIV testing and an immediate halt to the provision of anti-retroviral drugs to HIV positive pregnant and breast feeding women. The conference, held earlier this month at Uganda’s Roman Catholic Nkozi Martyrs University, near the capital […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Sunday A PRETORIA teenager has been arrested after confessing to killing her father and his lover by pouring petrol on them and setting them alight as they lay asleep. The teenager was taken into custody after the lover, Neeltjie Reese (39), gave a priest vital information about the attack as she […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Saturday ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe’s government has announced that it is to grab another 57 white-owned farms, including large chunks of two of Anglo American’s most intensive sugar and citrus estates – ignoring assurances that it will seize only properties that are under-utilised and which are part of multiple holdings. Notices […]

SOUTH Africa’s Deputy President Jacob Zuma is to hold a second day of talks with members of a main Hutu rebel group in Burundi to discuss ending the seven-year armed conflict. Zuma met a delegation from the National Liberation Forces (FNL) in Pretoria to discuss a ceasefire agreement. A source close to the negotiations said […]

A SOLDIER, airman and two policemen appeared in the Hoedspruit Periodical Court in Northern Province in connection with keeping a teenager as a sex slave for six months. Corporal Benzion Polonksky (27) of the Hoedspruit army base, Corporal Carl Joubert (26) of Hoedspruit air base and Constables Cornelius Lourens (25) and Nicholas Wolmarans (26) of […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Saturday SOUTH Africa’s agricultural trade faces an “immediate and devastating” embargo from foreign markets after the first outbreak of foot and mouth disease outside the Kruger National Park since 1956 was reported on a pig farm near Pietermaritzburg. The Camperdown farm where the outbreak was reported and surrounding farms have been […]