AT LEAST 68 of the estimated 187 people the rebels in Sierra Leone have released are pregnant and suckling females. Among the 187 are 111 children between the ages of 11 and 17, they abducted in January. The children, who were freed last week, were part of an estimated 3500 minors kidnapped by rebels, when […]
LUANDA has said it will severely punish illegal diamond miners in Angola’s central Bie Province, according to official news reports on Monday. The reports said that following rumours of new diamond sites in the province, a large number of illegal miners had started mining in areas controlled both by the Unita rebel movement and the […]
TUESDAY, 10.30AM: A LEADING property services group has called for landlords to be held criminally liable for allowing their properties to fall into an uninhabitable state. Increasingly high lending rates will deter developers from investing in residential properties, according to Trafalgar Property and Financial Services CEO Neville Schaefer. He suggests South Africa should take an […]
A BOMB attack left 44 people dead at a church in Congo-Brazzaville at the weekend, a local legislator said on Tuesday. The attack occurred during mass at a church in Mouyondzi, some 160km west of the capital Brazzaville, lawmaker Jacqueline Mamouni said over pro-government Radio Liberte. Mamouni, who is from Mouyondzi, blamed the attack on […]
TUESDAY, 11.00AM: THE Republic of Congo is planning to privatise 105 firms as part of a post-war economic reconstruction strategy which has the backing of the International Monetary Fund. Congo’s privatisation plans, dating back to 1995, and loan talks with the IMF, were broken off when the civil war erupted in June last year. Last […]
THE main rebel movement battling Democratic Republic of Congo President Laurent Kabila has ousted its leader Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, accusing him of “high treason,” a communique said on Wednesday. The executive committee of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) made the decision after Wamba dia Wamba allegedly met with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and […]
THE European Union is to fund a rescue exercise to translocate some 15 Ugandan elephants to a national park after local officials ordered that they be shot after they killed a person, tourism ministry officials said on Tuesday. Tourism, trade and industry ministry permanent secretary Stephen Kagoda said that the translocation of the jumbos from […]
MORE than 100000 hectares of crops have to be replanted in northern Ghana after they devoured by army worms, interior minister Nii Okaija Adamafio said on Monday. He told an emergency meeting of the National Food Security Committee of the National Disaster Management Organisation that this should be done immediately to enable farmers to benefit […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Brisbane | Monday 6.30pm. FORMER world record holder Samantha Riley says South African Penny Heyns’ world breaststroke records in the United States at the weekend will motivate her rivals. Heyns broke Australian Rebecca Brown’s six-year-old 200m mark of 2:24,76 with 2:24,51 in Los Angeles, and did the same to her own 100m record […]
HONG Kong financial secretary Donald Tsang will lead a high-level mission to South Africa this weekend to build closer economic ties. “We are always seeking to widen our commercial horizons, to diversify our trade in goods and services and to develop partnerships in regions where we see potential for significant growth,” Tsang said in a […]