UNDER normal circumstances, Brazilian coach Valinhos should have handed in his resignation soon after Zimbabwe's 2-4 defeat to Namibia, which rounded off the two teams' 2010 Group 2 qualifying campaign in Windhoek yesterday.

THE Zimbabwe national soccer side troop into the Independence Stadium in Windhoek tomorrow for their combined World Cup/African Nations Cup final qualifier with Namibia hoping for an outcome that seem to have been wiped out of African football: away victories.

THE private Ecumenical Community School (ECS) and the Gatsi Kubi Primary School, both in Berseba village, were temporarily merged towards the end of last month.

IN an unprecedented move, the weekly English-language free newspaper Informanté has ordered the recall of all its copies printed and distributed yesterday, as a result of mistaken identity in their lead story.

YOUNG members of the ruling Swapo Party would be better leaders for Namibia's future than the present old guard, an opposition Member of Parliament said yesterday.

THE financial sector in Namibia was stable and "not directly affected" by the international turmoil of late, said the Bank of Namibia (BoN), but would be hit by the expected global economic slowdown following the US credit crisis, which has spilt over to Euroland.

A WEB of evidence yesterday ensnared three men who were accused of stealing a small fortune in cash from an elderly Gobabis resident during an armed robbery at his house in April 2005, leaving them each facing 20-year prison sentences at the end of their trial in the Windhoek Regional Court.

OUR transition to independence was in addition to a history of both primary and secondary resistance, also the consequence of a negotiated settlement between the liberation movement and the West.These initiatives meant that the new order had to create a governance framework based on certain predetermined values as encapsulated in the Constitutional Principles set out by the Western Contact Group of five in the early 1980s.

The last of three golf coaching courses by Namibian professional golfer Joe Nawanga started at Swakopmund on Tuesday.

STEALING uranium is a "waste of time, dangerous and pointless", says Rio Tinto Roessing Uranium Limited's Manager of External Affairs, Jerome Mutumba.

AS the rest of the world buckles under the jackboot of financial and banking crises, Namibians remain almost blissfully unaware of the systemic consequences of the global meltdown.

A SECRET memo, prepared by Information Minister Joel Kaapanda, which recommends the dismissal of NBC Board chairperson Ponhele ya France, has come to light.

AIR Namibia yesterday introduced its new international route, linking Cape Town and Johannesburg with the upgraded Walvis Bay International Airport.

SWAKOPMUND'S beleaguered feral cat population now has its "meow" on the World Wide Web, with the recent launch of the Cat Protection Society's website 'The Feral Cats of Swakopmund'.

AN obsessively secret society is a closed one which won't get us anywhere, and there is a burning need for transparency, openness and accountability at all levels, in particular Government.

A NAMIBIAN Police officer is being treated in a Windhoek hospital for a gunshot wound to her head after her boyfriend allegedly shot her before turning his gun on himself on Wednesday morning.

When the US coughs, the rest of the world catches a cold, so they say.

While the private aviation companies that operate from Eros Airport seem to be having problems sticking to air safety procedures by the book, this has not been the case for aviation parastatals.

The wholly-owned local company, Trustco Group Holdings Limited, will list on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange at the end of this month, according to JSE documents made available to the Economist this week.

There is only one reason I can think of why the inter-bank credit markets do not want to become unstuck. Europe's banks have extremely talented people on their staff, and when the dominoes started falling in the US, I am sure they must have calculated their own exposure, more specifically that part of their balance sheets, which is exposed to sub-prime and come up with an astonishing answer: they are technically bankrupt and given their leverages, they realised there is nothing they could do about it.