AN Egyptian who had too much to drink in a nightclub on the banks of the Nile in Cairo, jumped into the river to dodge paying for his drinks, only to drown there, a police source said on Tuesday. Mohamed Massud, a 27-year-old taxi driver, had invited an electrician friend of the same age to […]
Jesse Jackson arrives for screening of video diary and criticises absence of black film-makers.
OWN CORRESPONDENT, LUANDA | Tuesday ANGOLAN rebel leader Jonas Savimbi on Monday welcomed the Catholic Church’s peace initiatives in the southwest African country and said that war was “absurd”. “After the liberation war against the Portuguese I hoped for a quiet life,” Savimbi said in a letter faxed to Reuters. “But unfortunately it didn’t happen.” […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, London | Monday MORE than 12 million children in sub-Saharan Africa — equivalent to every child in Britain under the age of 15 – have been orphaned by Aids, according to a report Monday by the British charity Christian Aid. By 2010, that figure will have risen to 43 million children, by which […]
NORTHERN Province Premier Ngoako Ramatlhodi is taking legal action against Democratic Alliance (DA) co-leader, Michael Holford, who accused him of not declaring his assets. Ramatlhodi said at a press conference on Monday that Holford did not attempt to verify facts before accusing him of corruption and misconduct. Holford accused Ramatlhodi in the weekend press of […]
MINING firm Billiton said on Sunday its investors had thrown their weight behind its proposed US$28bn merger with Australia’s BHP. Billiton said votes representing more than half of its share capital had already been received and nearly all were in favour of the merger proposal that will be put to a shareholders’ meeting on Tuesday. […]
A DIVING team located a school of coelacanths – an elusive prehistoric fish known as a “living fossil” – in Indian Ocean waters off eastern South Africa on Monday and is filming them, SABC radio reported. Coelacanths, a 400 million year-old species, were thought to have become extinct 70 or 80-million years ago until one […]
IN an official visit to Colombia, South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma on Monday signed an agreement with his South American counterpart Gustavo Bell to cooperate in the fight against drug trafficking. The document shows both countries’ intent to establish a bilateral committee of top-level officials enjoined to find solutions to the drug problem and […]
THE South African Communist Party (SACP), which is part of the ruling alliance in government, cautioned on Sunday against rushing ahead with privatisations. The government hopes to raise 18 billion rand from the proceeds of the sale of state assets in the 2001/02 fiscal year, led by an initial public offering for telecoms utility Telkom, […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, PRETORIA | Tuesday SOUTH Africa’s central bank governor Tito Mboweni said on Monday in Pretoria the rand is not a one-way bet despite its steep depreciation last year. “Notwithstanding the volatility in the exchange rate of the rand, we are convinced that there is every reason to be confident regarding the future path […]
ZIMBABWE’s government faced renewed pressure this week to devalue the country’s embattled currency with warnings that attempts to prop up the Zim Dollar were seriously harming exports. Leading Zimbabwean economist Eric Bloch said on Tuesday that the country’s fiscal policy had overvalued the Zimbabwe Dollar (Z$) by up to 50% against the currencies of major […]
VORACIOUS caterpillars are ravaging plantations and smallholdings in Cameroon’s Eastern and Southern Provinces, eating almost all the plants and crops they reach, the agriculture ministry said on Monday. “Not a single green plant is spared, from bananas to cocoyams to groundnuts,” said a plantation owner reached by telephone in the Ngomedzap region, about 100km south […]
THE share price of listed furniture retail group Profurn plummeted 45% late on Thursday after the group issued a warning that its earnings for the six months ending June 2001 would be “significantly lower” than those reported for the year earlier period. Profurn’s share price was last quoted at 60 cents, versus 109 cents late […]
THE family of an Algerian independence war fighter tortured by French special forces has filed a suit against French General Paul Aussaresses for war crimes and torture, the daily El Watan reported in Algiers on Monday. The state prosecutor in Tebessa, where the suit was lodged in court, said it could lead to the issuing […]
A CONTINGENT of 115 Moroccan troops arrived in the eastern city of Goma on Saturday to take part in the UN Observer Mission (MONUC) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The troops joined an initial contingent of just over 100 Moroccans who arrived on Thursday. The arrival of the forces completes the deployment of […]
PROMINENT Tunisian human rights lawyer Nejib Hosni, renowned for defending Muslim fundamentalist activists, was freed under a presidential pardon on Saturday. He was jailed on December 21 to serve a two-week sentence for the unlawful practice of his profession even though he is registered by the Tunisian bar association. As the sentence ran out on […]
THE trial in Libya of six Bulgarians accused of deliberately infecting 393 Libyan children with the HIV virus was adjourned on Sunday for the twelfth time, Bulgarian state television reported. The court, responding to Deputy Foreign Minister Marin Raikov’s request for a “transparent, objective, depoliticised and fair” trial, decided that witnesses would be called to […]
KENYAN authorities on Monday dropped a treason charge against an opposition member of parliament accused of calling for the killing of President Daniel arap Moi and instead charged him with incitement to violence, Kenyan state-run radio reported. Maina Kamanda, MP for the Starehe constituency in Nairobi and member of the Democratic Party, had 10 days […]
SOUTH African men are “too big” for standard condoms issued by the government, according to a national survey of prostitutes, The Sunday Times reported. “Most (prostitutes) complained that these things break because they come from the Far East and they’re too small for local men,” said researcher Ted Leggett, from the University of Natal. He […]
YOWERI MUSEVENI was sworn in on Saturday for a final five-year term as Uganda’s president in the presence of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and four other African leaders. In his first announcement after taking the oath of office, the Ugandan president said that on Gaddafi’s advice he was ready to restore diplomatic relations with neighbouring Sudan, […]
DAVID LE PAGE, Johannesburg | Monday JUDGE Willem Heath, former head of the Special Investigation Unit, has denied a Sunday Times report suggesting that he is out to secure a substantial discharge payment from government. According to Sunday reports, the Judges Remuneration and Conditions of Employment Act entitles him, after being discharged by the president, […]
EIGHT civilians have been killed and two women kidnapped in the north of DRC, authorities have announced in the region controlled by the Rwandan-backed rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD). It said the deaths took place between May 7-11. “One person was killed in an attack on a fishing ground in Zirwa, next to Lake […]
DJIBOUTI’S government signed a peace accord with ethnic Afar rebels on Saturday to formally end a decade-old uprising in the Horn of Africa country. The accord was signed by Interior Minister Abdallah Abdillahi Miguil and Ahmed Dini, head of the radical wing of the rebel Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy (FRUD), and […]
DAVID LJUNGGREN, Ottawa | Monday CANADA ran out of patience with Zimbabwe on Friday, suspending new development aid and imposing other sanctions to protest against harassment of its citizens in the increasingly lawless southern African country. Foreign Minister John Manley said Canada was particularly unhappy about an incident last week when its top diplomat and […]
TWO pitbull terriers killed an unidentified intruder that had apparently jumped over the wall of a house in Benoni in the early hours of Saturday morning, East Rand police said. The house’s owners, a couple in their 70s, found the mutilated body of the man after they noticed blood on their two dogs, local police […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday THREE trade unions are to hand Spoornet notice of their intention to strike in 48 hours unless the rail parastatal moves to end the wage negotiation deadlock, Sake Beeld reports. The three trade unions, Salstaff, the SA Transport & Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) and the United Transport and Allied Trade […]
EGYPTIAN police have detained 55 young Egyptian men for allegedly holding orgies and practicing “deviant rituals” in a boat on the River Nile in Cairo, a source in the prosecutor’s office said Saturday. State security prosecutors were investigating them Saturday for “exploiting religion for their own ends, practicing deviant rituals and holding parties where they […]
ELEVEN people, including seven members of the Algerian security forces, were killed Sunday by Islamic extremists near Batna, some 430km southeast of the capital Algiers, the security services announced. The security personnel were killed in a firefight after going to the scene of a roadside murder of four civilians, witnesses said. The security forces gave […]
AT least 42 people were killed on Friday and Saturday in heavy fighting between government troops and militia opponents battling for control of the port in the Somali capital Mogadishu, residents said. The fighting, the most intense in the city in months, pitted soldiers of the Transitional National Government of President Abdiqassim Salad Hassan against […]
MARIANNE MERTEN, Cape Town | Friday WE are divided and we will remain divided. Lets vote and go home, an African National Congress member of Parliaments ethics committee proposed. And for the first time ever the committee voted – mostly along party political lines. Minutes earlier Pan Africanist Congress MP Patricia de Lille had also […]
THAILAND wants to double trade with South Africa over the next few years, the country’s trade minister, Adisai Bodharamik, said in Johannesburg on Thursday. Bodharamik, speaking at Thailand’s Trade Exhibition at the Sandton Convention Centre, in northern Johannesburg, said trade between the two countries had exceeded $400-million during the last few years with significant growth […]
A SOUTH African defence forces helicopter came under fire in eastern KwaZulu-Natal province as police and soldiers mounted a joint operation after the deaths of at least seven people in faction fighting, a police officer said on Thursday. Captain At Slinger said the Oryx helicopter was not hit in the volley of automatic gunfire on […]