Staff Reporter

A SOUTH African court has withdrawn charges against seven vagrants accused of raping and robbing a Brazilian journalist because she failed to appear at the hearing. The reporter had been in South Africa for barely a day, in July 1999, when she was allegedly attacked on her way to her Johannesburg hotel. She left South […]

SOUTH African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) chairman Barney Pityana has appealed to President Thabo Mbeki to intervene to save Marietta Bosch from being hanged in Botswana, The Sunday Independent newspaper reports. Bosch, on death row in Gaborone, is facing the gallows for murdering her best friend so that she could marry her husband. “In our […]

NIGERIAS highest court has approved a death sentence against a man for killing his pregnant wife on suspicion her unborn child was the result of an affair. The Supreme Court of Nigeria confirmed the death sentence passed by a high court in Ijebu Ode in Ogun State that Pius Nweke be hanged for killing his […]

SUSAN NJANJI, Harare | Tuesday ZIMBABWES government has stepped up its campaign to drive senior members of the country’s judiciary off the bench, accusing judges of bias in favour of whites and the opposition. The first casualty was chief justice of the Supreme Court Anthony Gubbay, who last week was asked to retire early. Two […]

A BANGLADESHI court has ordered the immediate release of a young Nigerian languishing in jail since 1992 after being sentenced to a two-month term. Despite the High Court order, Goddyu Ochendo’s release from Dhaka’s Central Jail could take a few more days while Nigerian diplomats prepare his travel document and ticket for a flight back […]

THE Internet and e-mail provider Africa Online – which serves Kenya, Zimbabwe and six other African countries – has bought the Egyptian ISP MenaNet Communications SAE for $8.7m, giving it a foothold in the Middle East and North Africa. Under the deal, MenaNet will become a fully-owned subsidiary of Africa Online, which will use its […]

GERMAN narcotics police last month strangled a Nigerian immigrant apparently suspected of dealing drugs in Dusseldorf, a press report said. John Amadi, who had lived in Germany for five years, was trying to swallow some packets of cocaine when the police held his throat until he died. The paper quoted an unnamed Libyan national who […]

IRWIN ARIEFF, United Nations | Tuesday THE United Nations says it will capitalise on a lull in fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo by sending a smaller peacekeeping force than it had planned to the vast central African nation, but deploying it far faster. Jean-Marie Guehenno, the undersecretary-general in charge of peacekeeping, said the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday AN unrepentant safety and security minister Steve Tshwete has met with Portugals ambassador to South Africa, Manuel Rodrigues Perreira, following a growing row between South Africas Portuguese community and the government over crime. The fracas has seen South Africa’s acting ambassador to Portugal called to the Portugese foreign ministry in […]

ARCHEOLOGISTS have found the tomb of a high priest of a renegade pharaoh which may help them determine whether his monotheistic-type cult was practiced widely in Egypt. A Dutch-Egyptian team excavating in Saqqara, just south of Cairo, last week found the tomb belonging to Meri Aten, a high priest under the pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled […]

A FIVE-day workshop aimed at finding new ways to clip the wings of west and north Africa’s destructive migratory-locust swarms has begun here, a UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) official said. The workshop will discuss the implementation of the Emergency Prevention System (EMPRES) for Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases in west Africa, […]

FRENCH mercenary Daniel Clerino has been quietly released from jail in the Comoros, where he was held for 11 months in connection with a coup bid last March, and has left for his home in Reunion, an officer at the jail said. Clerino was accused of involvement in an abortive coup on March 21 last […]

UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Ruud Lubbers has called upon the Guinean government to ensure the safety of tens of thousands of refugees trapped by fighting in the region. The former Dutch prime minister arrived in Guinea at the weekend to begin a tour of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia to assess the plight […]

JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Monday SELF-CONFESSED fraud and controversial Mpumalanga youth leader James Nkambule, who has starred prominently in every major scandal in the province over the past five years, has again foiled Premier Ndaweni Mahlangu’s attempts to oust him from government. Nkambule and three other senior local government officials are back at work after […]

A SAUDI Arabian group is to invest $100m in building four luxury hotels in the Moroccan holiday resort of Agadir. The hotels will be built by Saudi Sheikh Salah Kamile’s Dalla al Barraka group and operated by one of its subsidiaries. An investment deal is due to be signed this week. The deal is the […]

GRAHAM WELCH, Pretoria | Monday AFRIKAANS talk station Punt Radio has agreed to co-operate with police after six senior former employers lodged tax evasion and fraud charges against the troubled station. The six disgruntled former managers, journalists and presenters laid multiple fraud charges with police in Morningside last week after Punt allegedly deducted tax, medical […]

ISLAMIC extremists slaughtered 26 people overnight near the town of Berrouaghia, south of Algiers, residents in the area said. The massacre took place in a shantytown called Cherata some 120km south of Algiers in an area where extremists of the hardline Armed Islamic Group (GIA) are active. Twenty-two bodies were found at the scene, most […]

IMPALA Platinum Holdings (Implats), the world’s number two platinum producer, posted record half-year profits on strong metal prices and a weak rand, briefly boosting its share to a new high. Implats said diluted headline earnings per share, which excludes exceptional items and their tax effects, were R33.63 in the six months to December 31, 2000, […]

GABONESE President Omar Bongo has accepted an invitation by the mediator in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ketumile Masire, to help the peace process. The development came just days ahead of a summit planned in the Zambian capital Lusaka bringing together all the warring parties in the DRC – Angola, Zimbabwe […]

TELECOMS consortiums, including the state-run firm Celcom, have paid over $1bn for four mobile phone licences in Nigeria. Three foreign-backed consortiums, including MTN Nigeria, each paid the asking price of $285m a licence within the requisite 14 days since an auction held here last month by the state-run telecoms regulatory agency, the National Communications Commission […]

A court recording of former president Nelson Mandela’s last speech before he was sentenced to life imprisonment has been released.

EGYPTIAN customs on Friday foiled an attempt to smuggle in 800 tablets of the male impotence treatment Viagra through Cairo airport, a source said. Egyptian customs foiled an attempt to smuggle in 10_000 Viagra tablets in January at Cairo airport. The Egyptian health ministry authorised the sale of Viagra on prescription in January, after banning […]

TWO men shot dead a Golden Arrow bus driver in Lansdowne Road near Khayelitsha on Saturday night, Cape Town police said on Sunday. Superintendent Neville Malila said the men boarded the bus around 8.15pm, shot dead Sebenzile Miyana and then ran away with his cash box. Miyana was shot in the chest and was certified […]

EMSIE FERREIRA, Cape Town | Sunday IF you walk far enough up Table Mountain these days you will hear the noise of chainsaws and falling trees and see sweaty yellow-shirted armies toppling the old pines and bluegums that well-meaning settlers planted for shade and wood. Time has shown the trees to be a menace – […]

RICH people with a history of mental illness are likelier to commit suicide than their poor counterparts, according to a study published in Saturday’s weekly British Medical Journal (BMJ). Researchers at Denmark’s University of Aarhus, exploring the link between social position and psychiatric disorder, trawled through national health archives from 1982 to 1994. The lower […]

KENYAN security forces have seized ivory worth hundreds of thousands of shillings and arrested a senior Pakistani army officer, the state-owned KBC radio reported on Saturday. The radio said that Lieutenant-Colonel Masud Mohamed, a liaison officer attached to the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, was arrested on Thursday at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport as […]

FANS of the song sharing service Napster logged on by the tens of thousands for a last minute grab at music they fear a federal court may knock offline. Nearly 10_000 users logged on Saturday to just one of Napster’s more than 100 computer servers sharing nearly 2 million free MP3 song files, according to […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Saturday PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe’s government on Friday seized all privately-held foreign currency in commercial bank accounts, mostly to pay the overdue salaries for state officials based abroad, the central bank announced. A brief statement on state television said that both private and corporate foreign currency accounts (FCA) held at commercial banks […]

THOUSANDS of Ethiopian women took to the streets of the capital Addis Ababa on Saturday to denounce daily acts of violence committed against them. The event was organised by the Ethiopian Women Lawyers’ Association (EWLA), along with 20 other governmental and non-governmental organisations. “It’s not a problem that is unique to Ethiopian women, but it […]

TWO Egyptian ministers are at loggerheads over a proposal by one of them to introduce sex education into the school curriculum, government weekly Akhbar al-Yom reported on Saturday. Culture Minister Faruq Hosni recently proposed to the parliament’s culture committee that sex education be introduced in the schools, but Education Minister Hussein Kamal Bahaeddin objected, it […]

FLIPPIE van Rooyen, the son of dead paedophile Gert van Rooyen, has been found guilty on one charge of perjury in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court. Van Rooyen was charged with three counts of perjury after he allegedly gave police conflicting statements under oath relating to six missing schoolgirls linked to his father in the late […]

TWO people are feared dead ater a South African helicopter crashed in Mfuwe National Park in eastern Zambia. Police said rescuers had not been able to reach the wreckage because of heavy rains and the difficult terrain. Two helicopters rushed to the scene could not land. “Our officers will try to get there Friday, depending […]