Staff Reporter

De Beers faces a multibillion-rand tax claim over a massive stockpile of diamonds it exported just ahead of South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994, the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> learnt recently. Subsequent exports are also under scrutiny. De Beers shipped 19-million carats — about three-and-a-half tonnes of unpolished stones — to London ahead of the April elections.

At the dusk of a century and the twilight of his life in 1998, Tanzania’s former leader Julius Nyerere met with top-level staff at the World Bank in Washington, DC. "Why have you failed?" the World Bank experts asked. Nyerere answered: "The British empire left us a country with 85% illiteracy, two engineers and 12 doctors."

One of the first sights you were introduced to as you entered the city of New Orleans from the airport was a quaint old graveyard, still in use, stretching back from the wide highway into clumps of trees and pleasant, slightly unkempt lawns.

Publisher of the <i>Daily Sun</i> Deon du Plessis is to launch a new South African daily newspaper on Monday, September 19th. To be called <i>Nova</i>, the paper will appear in a “compact” shape — the first of its kind in the country — and target Gauteng’s “young and aspiring professionals” between the ages of 25 and 40.

At the dusk of a century and the twilight of his life in 1998, Tanzania’s former leader Julius Nyerere met with top-level staff at the World Bank in Washington, DC. "Why have you failed?" the World Bank experts asked. Nyerere answered: "The British empire left us a country with 85% illiteracy, two engineers and 12 doctors."

A South African man has become the world’s fastest blind driver after barrelling down an airstrip at an average speed of 269kph, a newspaper reported on Friday. Hein Wagner set his record at the Mafikeng airstrip in north-western South Africa on Thursday, topping the previous record by 33kph.

The Vatican condemned on Friday plans by a team of British scientists to create a human embryo using genetic material from two women, on the grouds the experiment violated "three prohibitions". "This is a real experiment whose success remains to be proved, but which, from the moral point of view, violates at least three prohibitions" said Bishop Elio Sgreccia.

Bonobos, the great apes threatened with extinction which resolve disputes by having sex, have been given a sanctuary near Kinshasa where they wait to return to their home in the forests of the vast Democratic Republic of Congo. "Lola ya bonobos" is a 30ha forest run by the association Friends of the Bonobos, which over the last ten years has taken care of animals which have escaped being killed.

Islamic clerics in the Somali capital on Friday dismissed President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed as another warlord and said they would not recognise him as the leader of the country’s transitional government in the shattered African nation. The Union of Islamic Courts blamed Yusuf for attempting to spark new fighting in Somalia by deploying hundreds of fighters allegedly trained and armed by Ethiopia in his base in Jowhar.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) on Friday warned that hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people in Mozambique will go hungry unless the international community steps into the funding void and helps tackle the agency’s dramatic shortfall. Southern Mozambique is particularly hard hit by the food shortages.

It is with a sense of jealousy, a feeling of having lost out, that I see King Mswati III of Swaziland is taking unto himself his 13th wife. I don’t for a moment want to garnish myself with 13 wives, however young and attractive they may be; how sensually they disport themselves at the Sea Point reed dances.

Internet giant Yahoo! on Thursday sidestepped claims that it aided China in the jailing of a journalist after he sent an email from a Yahoo account, saying it has to abide by rules laid down in the countries it operates. The company refused to comment further on a claim that it gave information to the Chinese government leading to Shi Tao being jailed for 10 years.