Staff Reporter

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 […]

Sizwe samaYende, Lydenburg | Monday AN Mpumalanga farmer will be the first in South Africa to have his land expropriated after he refused to sell his land to the government for R840_000 so that it could be given to a dispossessed community. The legal team for land and agriculture minister Thoko Didiza is preparing to […]

A SOUTH African court has withdrawn charges against seven vagrants accused of raping and robbing a Brazilian journalist because she failed to appear at the hearing.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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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.

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

AN Mpumalanga businessman and an unemployed man accused of child sex will remain in custody for the duration of their trial. Security company owner and auctioneer Daniel Francois Botha, 57, and his friend Andries Johannes van der Mescht, 37, spent three days trying to convince the Belfast Magistrates Court to grant them bail. Their co-accused, […]

KWAZULU-Natal Wildlife media liaison officer Jeff Gaisford has been suspended for talking to the media about planned retrenchments in the organisation during negotiations. KwaZulu-Natal agriculture and environmental affairs MEC Narend Singh earlier this week announced that about 600 KZN Wildlife employees would be retrenched because of financial constraints. The Natal Witness on Friday reported that […]

A FIRE that raged from Thursday to Friday near Cape Town destroyed 18 buildings, officials said. It was brought under control Friday afternoon after firefighters from five stations in Cape Town were called in, said Cape Town Disaster Management Centre representative John Brown. He said about 160 firefighters and police were dousing the remnants of […]