The  Editors' Forum of Namibia's Media Ombudsman has launched the 2024 Presidential and National Assembly Elections Media Monitoring Project in Windhoek.

The media monitoring tool will be used to gauge the coverage of media houses and outlets before, during, and after the November 27 elections.

All media reports, interviews, and discussion programmes will be subjected to a tracking mechanism, and monthly reports on coverage will be provided to political parties during the pre- and post-election process as well as the polling itself.

A high-profile criminal trial involving prominent Namibians is set to start in the High Court at the Windhoek Correctional Service Centre in the capital tomorrow.

The much-publicised corruption trial dubbed the Fishrot trial, involves former Cabinet ministers Bernadt Esau and Sackey Shanghala, as well as former business executives James Hatuikulipi and Ricardo Gustavo.

Matters came to a head in November 2019 when police swooped on former Fisheries Minister Bernardt Esau and Justice Minister Sackey Shanghala. 

Other arrests followed swiftly.

Hundreds of mourners gathered at the Tanidare Lutheran Church in Windhoek's Soweto over the weekend to pay their last respects to the late former minister of education, Katrina Hanse-Himarwa, during the final memorial service. 

Mourners included former First Lady Monica Geingos, Deputy Ministers Jennely Matundu, Faustina Caley, Alexia Manombe-Ncube, Judge Nate Ndaendapo, Central Bank Governor Johannes !Gawaxab, Public Service Commission Chairperson Salman Jacobs, and Lawyer Sisa Namandje, as well as politburo and central committee members of the Swapo Party.

Excited high school learners from across Namibia have gathered in Windhoek for the sixth session of the Children's Parliament, set to commence on Tuesday.

The children, 62 in total, are drawn from high schools in all 14 of the country's 14 regions.

They are four from each region, with an additional six learners from the San and Ovahimba indigenous communities.

The Erongo Regional Council says the 127 tins of fish for drought relief were not disposed of because they were expired, as insinuated in a video circulating on social media.

It says the tins meant for Karibib will only expire in 2026, but they had to be disposed of because they were damaged in handling by a forklift.

In line with standard operating procedures, the damaged fish tins were inspected by a certified health inspector, who declared the damaged products unfit for consumption and ordered their removal.

Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa have excelled in a joint livestock sector project under the African Union.

Agriculture Minister Carl Schlettwein revealed this at the conclusion of official talks between the Presidents of Namibia and Botswana last week.

Under the project, all three countries make use of foot and mouth vaccines, produced in Botswana.

The first civil-military cooperation awareness campaign, involving teams from Namibia and Botswana, will start next week.
 
The campaign, which will cover 23 villages in Namibia and 21 villages in Botswana, is aimed at educating communities living along the common Namibia-Botswana border on the importance of peaceful co-existence and good neighbourliness.

The campaign is part of a civil-military cooperation plan launched by the defence ministers of the two countries in June. 

The Namibia-Ghana Permanent Joint Commission of Cooperation (PJCC) concluded in Swakopmund, Erongo Region, with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Namibia’s International Women’s Peace Centre and the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC).

The MoU provides for cooperation in the areas of technical capacity building, training, policy research, and analysis of women in peace and security, as well as in peacekeeping and peace support operations.

UNAIDS has applauded the Namibian Constitutional Court's decision to declare the law that criminalised same-sex relationships as unconstitutional.

The court found the law incompatible with the constitutional rights of Namibian citizens.

This decision aligns with a series of judgements by courts in Southern Africa in recent years, marking a significant victory for equality and human rights for all Namibians. It will also help protect everyone's health.

The Office of the Secretary to the Cabinet says that serious public service delivery challenges at institutions of higher education require collective solutions from all Namibians.

In a statement, the office states that these challenges should not be seen as unique to those institutions alone and that all stakeholders should address them.