VIENNA: Austrian government officials are up in arms over the issue of housing Nigerian and other African asylum seekers, with the government saying no village or city can be found to build a third asylum center for refugees.

BAE Systems is to pay up to $450m (£288m) in fines after it pleaded guilty to false statements and accounting practices, notably over deals with Saudi Arabia and Tanzania, in a landmark settlement between the defence giant and the US and UK authorities.

The Serious Fraud Office also dropped proceedings last night against Count Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, who was charged with making illegal payments to government officials to win jet deals for BAE just last week.

Botswana this week recalled two senior diplomats based in Zimbabwe as the diplomatic row over three Batswana rangers arrested for entering Zimbabwe illegally escalated. The government of Botswana said it would recall its defence and intelligence attaches by the end of the month and asked that Harare withdraw its defence and Central Intelligence Organization personnel from its Gaborone embassy by the same date.

RWANDAN genocide hero and inspiration behind the film Hotel Rwanda, Paul Rusesabagina, says the east African country has neither healed from the 1994 genocide nor learned any lessons from it, as he accused the Rwandan government of continuing human rights abuses through the alleged arbitrary arrest and transportation of Hutus to work illegally in mines in the Congo.

PICKING diamonds in the dirt has become a pipedream for many African nations, but Botswana, a landlocked nation mainly made up of the Kalahari desert, has continued to pick diamonds in the fray of socio-economical and political chanllenges facing other African countries today.

A group of nuclear physicists, military experts and diplomats has warned the United States and its military allies against launching an Iraq-style pre-emptive war on Iran to cripple its purported nuclear arms programme, saying such an attack would escalate the global risk of a nuclear holocaust.

Africa is facing region-wide energy shortages as climatic changes intermittently turn off the switch on hydro-electricity generation and oil prices remain exorbitantly high. As regional energy powerhouse, South Africa, ponders uranium enrichment…