ERITREA’S government has ordered the Sudanese opposition to evacuate Sudan’s embassy in Asmara after an unannounced visit by a security team from Khartoum last week, a newspaper reported on Sunday. The evacuation order was issued to Sudan’s National Democratic Alliance on Friday, two days after a visit to Asmara by a Sudanese technical mission, Al-Rai […]

CABINET has asked the Mineral and Energy Affairs Department to finish up the restructuring of the liquid fuels industry by the end of 1999. While current regulatory mechanism will remain in place, all the investigations and consultations over new mechanisms should be completed by the end of the year. A key element of the restructuring […]

A UGANDAN rebel group has circulated leaflets to newspapers here claiming responsibility for all recent bomb blasts in the capital. The National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (Nalu), a moribund group which was active in western Ugandan in the early 1990s, said its agents carried out the attacks in the capital. A spate of […]

AMNESTY International demanded on Saturday the release of its Togo bureau staffer Antoine Koffi Nadjombe, arrested in Lome on Friday. The international human rights group also demanded the release of Nadjombe’s wife and two members of the Togolese League for the Defence and Promotion of Human Rights, Nestor Tengue and Francois Gayibor. Amnesty said it […]

PAN Africanist Congress MP Patricia de Lille is in a stable condition at a local hospital in Oudsthoorn after a car crash on Friday morning. De Lille and the PAC’s election manager, Avril Harding, were travelling in a party car when the accident occurred just after 11am about 30km outside Oudsthoorn. De Lille was bruised, […]

LIBERIAN President Charles Taylor on Saturday reinstated six of 13 cabinet ministers he had earlier dismissed for failing to attend a prayer service for the nation that he had convened, a government statement said. “All other cabinet ministers and heads of public corporations not included on the list of officials to resume duties are hereby […]

THE Association of Microlenders and Associated Consumers has objected to latest government proposals to regulate the industry, claiming the planned controls will close it down. The proposed regulations include capping interest rates from the current allowable 30% per month to 15,83% a month, or 190% a year. Association MD Henk Vivier says if the regulations […]

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe, to the surprise of no-one, has said in Harare that he has no plans to retire in two year’s time, as reports two weeks ago suggested. According to news agency Xinhua, Mugabe said at a Harare press conference that he will leave in his own time, and on his own terms. Recent […]

BRITISH tycoon Richard Branson is to buy a multi-million-dollar game reserve near South Africa’s famous Kruger National Park on the border with Mozambique, reports said on Saturday. The head of the Virgin empire will next month pay some R40-million for the 3500 hectare Ulusaba game reserve in the Mpumalanga province. He plans to upgrade the […]

KENYA’S pioneering political and business journal, the Weekly Review has folded. This week’s issue of the authoritative magazine, which goes on sale on Friday is the last one in a 24-year-old publishing history. No comments were available from the magazine’s owner-publisher, veteran journalist Hilary Gweno, but media sources said the magazine was closing down due […]