JOHANNESBURG, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - A South African community's lengthy battle to reclaim diamond-rich land taken from them 70 years ago ended in victory on Tuesday as the state reached an agreement with the claimants.

The Richtersveld community will be handed 194,600 hectares, including 84,000 diamond-rich hectares, for which it first lodged a claim in 1998, along the Namaqualand coast in the country's Northern Cape province.

JOHANNESBURG, Sept 22, 2007 (AFP) - Nearly 3,000 people rallied Saturday in the northern South African town of Mafikeng to demand that the country's overwhelmingly black farm labourers are not ill-treated, the organisers said.

The rally follows a threat by the country's land minister to expropriate land from farmers who mistreat their workers.

The demonstrators came from the rural areas of the mainly agricultural North West province, said Solly Phetoe, in charge of the provincial chapter of COSATU, South Africa's leading trade union federation.

NAIROBI, Sept 19, 2007 (AFP) - Kenyan police killed four militiamen Wednesday in a western region where tribal fighters are seeking an end to a land distribution scheme, an official said Wednesday.

Several others were wounded in a firefight with the so-called Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF) in the Mount Elgon region near the border with Uganda, said local administrator Mohammed Biriki.

SHANGHAI, Sept 19, 2007 (AFP) - Typhoon Wipha, potentially the most destructive storm in a decade, slammed into China's eastern coast early Wednesday, state media said.

The typhoon made landfall south of China's financial capital Shanghai packing winds of 45 metres (150 feet) per second, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Earlier, fears it would hit Shanghai had triggered mass evacuations and disrupted the women's World Cup.

JOHANNESBURG, Sept 16, 2007 (AFP) - South Africa's agriculture ministry caused a flurry of disquiet among the country's farmers this week by threatening those who mistreat their workers with land expropriation.

'We are obviously disturbed by the persistent reports of abuses on farms,' Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana told a national conference in Johannesburg on Thursday of the Food and Allied Workers Union that represents farm workers.

SHENGYOU, China, Sept 13, 2007 (AFP) - Violence has erupted again in a northern Chinese village where authorities were last year severely punished for hiring armed thugs to force farmers off their lands, residents said.

Police in Shengyou village, Hebei province, detained two foreign journalists from Agence France-Presse on Wednesday after the reporters entered the village to confirm reports of August 28 clashes between police and villagers.

PRETORIA, Sept 3, 2007 (AFP) - South Africa should impose a two-year freeze on the sale of state land to foreigners until detailed plans are drawn up to tackle the sensitive issue, a government-commissioned report said Monday.

'A limited temporary moratorium of (more or less) two years prohibiting the disposal of state land, including land held by any organ of state, state-owned enterprises and any of the three spheres of government to foreigners' should be introduced, said the 42-page report released in Pretoria.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida, Aug 21, 2007 (AFP) - US space shuttle Endeavour landed safely back on Earth Tuesday after a two-week mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

The Endeavour arrived back in Florida, greeted by blue skies, after being forced to cut short its missions by a day amid fears the NASA control center in Houston, Texas, could be hit by Hurricane Dean.

The shuttle's wheels touched the ground at Cape Canaveral at 1632, ending a 13-day mission for its five-man, two-woman crew.