Staff Reporter

A HOLLYWOOD firm plans to take 200 Ethiopian farmers from a remote province to Namibia for parts in “Beyond Borders”, a big budget movie starring Angelina Jolie and Kevin Costner, a news magazine said on Monday. Production company Lions Gate International also sent representatives to Ethiopia last week to screen-test 12 indigenous artists to play […]

THE USA authorities have requested South African missions in New York and Washington to secure DNA samples from family members of South Africans presumed missing following the recent terrorist attacks in the USA. At the moment there are six South Africans reported missing in the USA. The US authorities have requested the following from family […]

MAX HAMATA, Windhoek | Wednesday THE Namibian government on Tuesday unveiled a new Defence Bill which includes draconian measures that attempt to restrict the media’s reporting on military activities. Defence Minister Erkki Nghimtina said in the National Assembly that it would be an offence to publish “information calculated or likely to endanger national security or […]

THE Kruger National Park has appealed to anyone with information about the cause of the devastating fire that killed 23 people three weeks ago to contact investigators. A commission of inquiry into the tragedy will soon be established, said Kruger director David Mabunda, on Tuesday. Those with information could then make submissions to the commission, […]

Washington | Wednesday THE IMF and World Bank agreed on Tuesday to give Mozambique $600-million in special relief to ease its debt servicing burden. Mozambique had taken the required steps to complete its program under the so-called enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, drawn up to ease the debt burden of the world’s poorest countries. […]

OFFICIALS and businessmen from Houston, Texas, and Zarzis port on Tunisia’s southeast Mediterranean coast have signed an agreement to establish sea trade links, officials said in Tunis on Monday. Zarzis is an economic free zone set up in 1993 to service foreign companies engaged totally in the export business, while the city in the southern […]

FOUR people were killed at the weekend in a machete attack by rebels in the southern Angolan village of Katongo, Roman Catholic radio Ecclesia reported. The attackers, who identified themselves as rebels from the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita), surprised the victims at a bottle store in Cuanza-Sul province, the radio […]

Harare | Tuesday A ZIMBABWEAN white farmer charged with murder over violence on his land saw his bail application postponed on Monday as President Robert Mugabe’s government accused commercial farmers of “economic terrorism”. A high court judge put off the bail hearing for three days in the case of John Bibby, a 70-year-old farmer arrested […]

MALAWI’S chief money-spinner, the tobacco industry, said on Tuesday it had formed an association to eliminate child labour on tobacco farms. Amin Mponda-Lungu, vice-president of the Tobacco Association of Malawi (Tama), said the association had been formed to fight “this evil practice” after Malawi was found to be the worst offender in the region. Mponda-Lungu […]

Blantyre | Tuesday THE Malawi government, facing looming food shortages, said on Monday the country and donors will spend $8-million on free agricultural inputs for one million rural households. The inputs include free fertiliser and seed, which will be given to villagers to spur maize production next year and ease food shortages at a time […]

MUNGO SOGGOT, STEFAANS BRMMER, Johannesburg | Friday THE global recession that is likely to follow last week’s terror attacks on the United States will hit the South African economy in the short term. But economists say changed global conditions could spur the government to find new ways of stimulating domestic growth and could be positive […]

Johannesburg | Monday DEMOCRATIC Alliance leader Tony Leon said on Monday that he has lodged a formal request with the Medical Research Council to secure its report on Aids-related deaths. “I have also requested the findings of a study on the economic impact of HIV/Aids from the Department of Finance,” Leon said in a prepared […]

ZAMBIAN President Frederick Chiluba has divorced from his wife of 33 years, Vera. The couple had been separated for more than a year before Chiluba (58) filed for divorce before a local court in Copperbelt province. Vera Chiluba told a conference of women in politics Monday that the divorce was a very sad development for […]

THE candidate for Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF party won a by-election to fill the seat left vacant after the death of war veterans leader Chenjerai Hunzvi. Bernard Makokove of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) defeated the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change’s (MDC) Oswald Ndanga by 15 570 votes to 5 207, state television […]

US President George W Bush on Monday extended for another year sanctions imposed against rebels of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita). The White House said the president had concluded the rebel group continued to threaten the peace process in Angola. The 1993 sanctions banned arms and oil sales to Unita […]

THE national secretary of Zambia’s Ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), Michael Sata, resigned from the party on Monday, four days after he quit his top ministerial position. “He tendered his resignation from the party this afternoon,” said his representative Eddie Lifwekelo. According to Lifwekelo, Sata resigned from the party in protest against the manner […]

THE permanent secretary for mines and energy, Retired Colonel Christian Katsande, has been banned from attending a summit in the United States – becoming the first victim of travel restrictions being implemented by the United States government against President Robert Mugabe and his officials. The US has also deferred a training programme that had been […]

AUTHORITIES of Lome University have hiked entrance fees almost ten-fold for the 2001-2002 academic year, an official in the Togolese capital of Lome said on Monday. He said the annual fees had been raised from 5 270 CFA francs (seven dollars), set in 1970, to 50 000 CFA francs ($69). There was no immediate reaction […]

SEVEN people, including tourists from the French island of Reunion, were killed on Monday when the light aircraft they were flying in crashed near the airport of Madagascar’s capital, pilots said. The Navajo PA 31 plane was approaching Antananarivo when the pilot reported problems first in one engine, then in the second, and subsequently crashed […]

SOUTH African Airways (SAA) will resume scheduled flights between Johannesburg, Lagos and New York on Wednesday, the airline announced on Tuesday. This is because “the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos now meets (US) Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) security requirements,” it said in a statement. The statement said that SAA flights from Johannesburg to Atlanta, Georgia, […]

THE IMF executive board on Thursday gave preliminary approval to a three-year credit worth $169-million for Sierra Leone to help the conflict-riven West African nation fight poverty. Final approval for the credit, called a poverty reduction and growth facility, will come with action by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund’s sister institution. The bank’s […]

Manila | Tuesday THE Philippine government will obtain a court order to freeze the assets of the Muslim Abu Sayaf kidnap-for-ransom group as ordered by US President George Bush, officials said on Tuesday. “The freeze of assets must go through court process,” President Gloria Arroyo’s representative Rigoberto Tiglao said. Bush issued an executive order on […]

SEGUN ARIBIKE, Nigeria | Tuesday A MIDDLE-aged Nigerian man is expected to be stoned to death next month after confessing to sodomising a seven-year-old boy. Attahiru Umaru’s death sentence is the first in Nigeria by a Islamic Sharia Court since a religious justice system was implemented in 10 northern Nigerian states last year. Umaru told […]

NIGERIAN authorities on Monday charged a Filipino man and his alleged Nigerian accomplice with illegally importing cocaine in the country’s biggest-ever drugs bust. Angelito Marinay was charged along with a Nigerian, Moshood Olatunji, after a haul of 60 kilogrammes of cocaine worth nine million dollars were found on a ship at Lagos main port in […]

Cadres appear to have sold themselves for 30 pieces of silver NO blows BARRED Sipho Seepe The 1994 democratic election brought to an end centuries of racial and colonial domination of the continent. Credit is due to the men and women who defied and overcame extreme repression and dehumanisation. They heroically suffered mental and physical […]

Ten students from disadvantaged communities recently won bursaries totalling R2,1-million to enable them to study at Malaysia’s Multimedia University. Thintana Communications, a foreign consortium, awarded the bursaries and has committed more than R120-million over five years to projects like Unitele, aimed at improving maths and technology skills in South Africa. Telkom SA and Thintana now […]

Bongani Majola At the beginning of last year Morgan Motshabi and Sphiwe Gumbi had never sat in front of a computer. By the beginning of this year, they had qualifications as computer-assisted engineers and had landed good jobs in the drawing office of Bateman Engineering Ltd. A one-year computer-assisted draughting programme at the African Academy […]

In the bewildering days after Tuesday, I felt anger against the US’s self-righteous proclamations, overlaid with a religious veneer. How would five decades of US atrocities around the world, I asked people, compare to Tuesday’s atrocity? What about a look at the less respectable things America has done over the past 50 years, to see […]

food Valentine Cascarino At first I was convinced it was a hangover that triggered the feeling I was back in Paris. But when I returned to the newly established Congolese Restaurant in Yeoville two weeks later, French tourists dining with me felt the same way. With kwasa kwasa music constantly vibrating in the background, the […]

Why do women want to look like skeletons? Is the media to blame, or is body-sculpting the new DIY? BODY LANGUAGE Gaby Wood If you invented a game called fantasy glossies, in which imaginary magazines had to be put together using the most marketable elements of everything on the news agent’s shelf, you might, in […]

Glenda Daniels More than 50% of young information technology experts in South Africa want to leave the country, a recent survey shows. And the International Labour Organisation says the IT skills gap worldwide will triple over the next couple of years, with a predicted 1,6-million jobs in Europe alone unfilled by next year. South African […]