Staff Reporter

THE Zimbabwe government has approved the commercialisation of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) into a public company wholly owned by the government. The Herald reported that the ZBC commercialisation Bill will soon go to parliament. The Bill intends to split the public broadcaster into two separate companies: one responsible for Broadcasting and the other for […]

TWO South African Airways flights were grounded on Thursday night, after flight attendants and personnel in Cape Town discovered a latex glove and “white powerdery substance” on a plane being readied for flight to Johannesburg. According to SAA, all personnel were ordered to leave the aircraft. The police were called, and chemical decontamination specialists Waste […]

THE South African government is concerned about the deaths of civilians in Afghanistan, and has called for constraint in the use by the US of military strikes, an official said on Tuesday. “While South Africa recognises the right of the United States government to track down the perpetrators of the September 11 terrorist attacks to […]

SIX staff members at the US consulate general in Durban, South Africa, were taken to a hospital for tests after an anthrax scare Tuesday, said public relations officer Amelia Broderick. She said the secretary to consul general Craig Kuehl opened a typed envelope, addressed to the consulate general, which contained “an unidentified white powder”. “We […]

EGYPTIAN President Hosni Mubarak offered support to the United States in its war on terrorism, but reiterated his opposition to a prolonged conflict that goes beyond Afghanistan, in an interview with Newsweek magazine. “I support the United States in fighting terrorism,” Mubarak said in the interview to appear in the weekly’s Monday edition. “We suffered […]

GLENDA DANIELS, Johannesburg | Friday AMENDMENTS to the Labour Relations Act – recently hailed as a major breakthrough between labour, business and the government – remain bedeviled by controversial sticking points and may not see the light of day this year. Hitches remain over the right to strike on retrenchments, seen as the major concession […]

Harare | Monday ZIMBABWE’S tobacco production dropped 35,3-million kilos in 2001, to 201,7-million kilos, after last year’s record-high crop, the state-run Herald said on Saturday. With an average price of 175 Zimbabwe dollars (US$3,18) per kilo, tobacco sales totalled 35-billion Zimbabwe dollars ($630-million) when the auction season closed on Friday, producers said. Prices were higher […]

TOGOLESE President Gnassingbe Eyadema has pardoned a journalist close to the opposition who was sentenced to prison in June for fraud, officials said on Monday. Eyadema on Wednesday signed a decree pardoning Lucien Djossou Messan, who was given a 12-month jail term in June. Messan, editor of the Combat du Peuple weekly, is known for […]

London | Tuesday ABOUT 7 000 sick and dying South Africans claiming compensation for asbestos-related ailments from the London-based insulation and building materials company Cape Plc, may settle for UK25-million (R330-million), their British lawyers said. “This is substantially less than the claimants may expect to receive after a trial, if Cape could have afforded to […]

BURUNDI’S national assembly has adopted by acclamation the transitional constitution that will guide the workings of the three-year government due to begin functioning on 1 November. The ABP news agency reported that the “status and restoration of the monarchy can only occur by referendum” and that “all authorised political parties or movements” can take part […]

BRITAIN’S Princess Anne arrived on Monday in the Nigerian capital Abuja for a week-long visit, airport officials said. Princess Anne (51) is scheduled to meet President Olusegun Obasanjo in his office, according to her official programme. The six-day working visit “will highlight the range and scope of the United Kingdom’s engagement throughout Nigeria”. A particular […]

THE Namibian Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources is considering not granting a pelagic quota next year, even though the full quota was caught by the end of the season in August this year. The total allowable catch (TAC) for the past season was 10 000 tons. The season started very slowly with only 700 […]

ROBERT MACPHERSON, Luxembourg | Tuesday EU foreign ministers set the wheels in motion on Monday to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe if it fails to make immediate progress towards greater democracy. Meeting in Luxembourg, they put into action Article 96 of the Cotonou agreement that governs relations between the European Union and its African-Caribbean-Pacific partners. That […]

Maputo | Tuesday SOUTH African financial giant Absa will take over Mozambique’s scandal-plagued commercial bank Banco Austral after months of difficult negotiations, the government announced on Tuesday. Banco Austral was Mozambique’s largest bank until its privatisation three years ago. A Malaysian-led consortium bought 51% of the bank, but then it quickly racked up more than […]

Cape Town | Monday UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said on Monday that child mortality rates in Afghanistan, where thousands of children die of preventable diseases each year, will worsen as refugees flood from the war-battered country. “The plight of Afghanistan’s children was terrible even before the recent crisis,” she told the American Academy of […]

Chief mediator in the Burundi peace process, Nelson Mandela, has called on international donors to double to $880-million the amount of aid they pledged to Burundi.

ZIMBABWEAN health staff have begun a mass anthrax campaign after at least 15 people contracted the disease in central Zimbabwe, apparently after butchering infected cows. Local media said the latest outbreak was first noticed in cattle in early October, with the first human case reported on October 20. The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation said a “massive […]

A FIRST contingent of South African soldiers taking part in a multi-national force to protect exiled political leaders returning to Burundi arrived in Bujumbura on Sunday. The soldiers, dressed in full combat gear, arrived in the Burundian capital at 2:00 pm local time after a three-hour flight from the Waterkloof military base near Pretoria. The […]

Washington | Wednesday IN a public relations setback, the Pentagon acknowledged on Tuesday that US warplanes missed their targets in two separate incidents over the weekend, dropping bombs on a residential area of Kabul and near a senior citizens home on the outskirts of Herat. Pentagon representative Victoria Clarke said the Pentagon had no information […]

THE Nigerian army is investigating an attack by soldiers on an ex-army chief’s house and the massacre of some 200 civilians in central Nigeria. Government troops last week ran rampant in the towns of Zaki-Biam, Gbeji, Anyii, Iorja, Vaase, Tseadoor and Sankara in Benue State in apparent reprisal for the murder of 19 soldiers kidnapped […]

GERARD VANDENBERGHE, Nairobi | Monday AFRICA’S airwaves are shortly to become a new battleground in the war against Aids, with Kenyan television stars and a supporting cast of numerous UN agencies and other international backers joining forces in a new soap opera for the continent. “Heart and Soul” will begin radio and television broadcasts as […]

SUSAN NJANJI, Harare | Monday A STATEMENT issued at the end of a Commonwealth mission to probe what steps have been taken to end violence on Zimbabwe’s farms in exchange for help with land reforms showed there is little hope for an early end to the crisis. Ministers from seven Commonwealth countries who made up […]

THE international terminal of Johannesburg Airport was evacuated for around an hour late on Saturday after a hoax bomb alert near the El Al counter, police said, with one source describing the device as a “dummy bomb” designed to cause panic. Several hundred people were asked to leave the building while bomb disposal experts using […]

MOZAMBICAN President Joaquim Chissano arrived in Cuba for a week-long official visit on Sunday, in hopes to expand bilateral relations with the communist-ruled island. The Mozambican leader, a frequent guest in Havana since Mozambique gained independence in 1975, was met at the airport by Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque. He is scheduled to meet […]

MORE than 100 people died in weekend riots in the northern Nigerian city of Kano sparked by a Muslim rally against US-led reprisal attacks on Afghanistan, the Nigerian Red Cross said on Tuesday. “The number of dead people cannot be ascertained by the Red Cross but it is safe and reliable to quote a figure […]

PRESIDENT Sam Nujoma has picked the coastal town of Henties Bay as the place to retire to, and is building a luxury house on the sea front. The President’s love of fishing appears to be the main motivating factor behind his decision. Nujoma apparently plans to spend summer at the beach-front house and the six […]

AT least 15 people have contracted anthrax in central Zimbabwe, the state-run Herald reported, apparently after butchering infected cows. The disease which has spread fear through the United States because of its use as a biological weapon periodically breaks out in Zimbabwe, where it can naturally spread from cattle to people. The former white-minority government […]

MORE than 5 000 Egyptians gathered after prayers at the al-Azhar mosque, Egypt’s largest, to vent their anger Friday against the United States and Britain. “Down with the United States, down with Britain. Long live the Muslims,” chanted the demonstrators, who included representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood and of the Nasserite movement who had arrived […]

Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi said Thursday that suspected attacks with the anthrax bacillus in the United States, if proved true, would be “the worst type of terrorism.” In a statement carried by the official news agency Jana, Gadaffi said that “if it turns out that anthrax germs have been deliberately spread in the United States, […]

OLA AWONIYI, Makurdi | Friday RESIDENTS driven by troops into the bush from towns in a central Nigerian state where officials said more than 130 were massacred have narrated their heart-rending experiences. “Since I ran into the bush on Tuesday when soldiers attacked Zaki-Biam, I have not seen my two wives and nine children. I […]

MOST retail shop shelves that are normally stocked with washing soap and cooking oil are empty, heralding what looks set to become a serious shortage of basic commodities in Harare. The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries warned early this month that there would be food shortages in Zimbabwe following the gazetting of price control regulations on […]

SUSPECTED war veterans and the police are impounding maize from travelers from rural areas, and ordering them to sell it to the Grain Marketing Board (GMB). Passengers and bus conductors yesterday complained of police harassment, saying the maize they carried was in small quantities and had been given to them by their relatives in the […]