Staff Reporter

The Zimbabwe government has deployed military doctors and nurses to state hospitals that are reeling under a strike by state medical staff, the <i>Herald</i> newspaper reported on Wednesday. Health Minister David Parirenyatwa told the state-run daily that the deployment was an emergency measure aimed at avoiding loss of lives.

Pupils at state schools in the west African state of Guinea Bissau resumed classes on Wednesday for the first time in two years after teachers called off a strike over back pay. The union decided on Tuesday to call off the marathon stoppage after a meeting with Guinea-Bissau President Henrique Rosa.

The employee benefits industry in South Africa has, for the first time, a unified voice to represent its interests to other role players, following a merger of its two main representative organisations. The merger comes at a time of unprecedented
legislative and regulatory activity in the employee benefits industry.

Two American soldiers were killed when their Abrams battle tank was damaged by resistance fighters, resulting in the number of US soldiers killed in combat since major fighting ended topping the wartime total. In a separate attack, seven Ukrainian troops were wounded in the first ambush of a multinational unit in Baghdad.

The UN Security Council on Tuesday extended the 12-year peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara for another three months, with no end to the stand-off between Algeria and Morocco in sight.

The National Intelligence Agency (NIA) said on Tuesday it was concerned by statements attributed to National Directorate of Public Prosecutions spokesperson Sipho Ngwema in a daily newspaper. "Statements made in the <i>ThisDay</i> newspaper are inaccurate and misleading," said an NIA spokesperson.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=22774">’Flawed’ arguments</a>

One of the best examples of the fact that drugs will keep you alive a lot longer than jogging is the Rolling Stone’s ‘Keef’ Richards. The coolest part about his official site is that you can listen to his rambling responses to fans questions here. Or perhaps you’d be interested in what you could arrive at if you had a creative urge and access to too many bras, as one man did …

Don’t look now but there is not a boiling war anywhere in Africa. For the first time in years the continent that has become synonymous with conflict is enjoying a relative calm. Analysts, though not ready to hail the new dawn of peace, agree the African continent is the quietest it has been in five years

Available data on HIV prevalence and Aids as a cause of death in South Africa shows the situation is still far from ideal, a report by the South African Reserve Bank illustrates. It indicates more needs to be done to strengthen the "generalisability" of statistics and to provide an empirical basis for modelling assumptions.

The Economic Commission for Africa is convening a major conference in Addis Ababa on Tuesday on Africa’s economic future, bringing together several African finance ministers, development ministers from throughout the developed world, and the heads of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

African leaders often fail to understand the role that their countries’ stock exchanges can play in funding economic development, and unwittingly implement policies which thwart the very prosperity they are trying to create.

The United States embassy in Uganda has confirmed that it is offering military aid to the Ugandan defence ministry to help it fight the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency in the north of the country.

The United States embassy in Uganda has confirmed that it is offering military aid to the Ugandan defence ministry to help it fight the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency in the north of the country.

South Africa’s big four banks should comfortably reach many of the targets set out in the recently released Financial Services Charter on Black Economic Empowerment, according to investment bankers Merrill Lynch.

Standard Bank has warned customers to be cautious when accepting cheques as payment for goods. This follows several cases of customers being presented with "cloned" Standard Bank cheques for second hand goods that were advertised in publications such as Junk Mail and Auto Trader.

The United Nations World Food Programme’s (WFP) southern African 2003/04 regional operation is currently only 28% funded, with donor contributions of $147,9-million received compared with a requirement of $533-million, the WFP said in a statement on Monday.

The UN has strained every sinew to emphasise the extent of Africa’s famine that has put 30-million people on the brink of starvation. Yet the countries able to assist are not writing the cheques. Their resistance is largely owing to bad governance, which is one of the root causes of the shortage. The worst culprit is Zimbabwe.

Doctors at Zimbabwe’s government hospitals have gone on an indefinite strike demanding an 8 000% pay increase, their union leader said on Friday. "The strike started around midday yesterday," said Phibion Manyanga, president of the Hospital Doctors Association.

State-owned PetroSA has suffered an estimated R1,5-billion loss, allegedly caused by a technical foul-up that shut down the company’s Mossel Bay oil-from-gas plant on July 3 this year. Thus far PetroSA has refused to quantify publicly the cost of the breakdown, caused by the failure of all three steam-generating units.

It was a more confident Mohamed Abdelaziz who led the 11th congress of his Polisario Front last weekend, knowing that his exiled people have Morocco on the back foot. The North African kingdom has occupied the Western Sahara, which it invaded in 1975, in defiance of the international community.

The Hefer commission heard more on Thursday about Mac Maharaj’s alleged "fishing" for clues to substantiate his spying allegations against National Director of Public Prosections Bulelani Ngcuka.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=22488">ANC: Zuma need not testify</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=22455">Former activists testify before Hefer</a>