New York - Academy Award winner actress and activist Charlize Theron was named UN Messenger of Peace to lead the campaign to end violence against women, the UN said Friday.

Theron founded The Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project in partnership with the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) to help improve the lives of poor children and their families in her native South Africa, particularly those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

Johannesburg - Former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan, former US president Jimmy Carter and Mozambican activist Graca Machel will visit Zimbabwe later this month to assess the humanitarian crisis in the country, it was announced Friday.

They will be visiting on behalf of The Elders, a group of leading international statesmen and women that was formed by former South African president Nelson Mandela last year to tackle some of the world's most intractable conflicts.

South African Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu and former Irish president Mary Robinson are among some of the other members of the 11-person group.

Johannesburg  - South Africans have been invited to mourn deceased singer Miriam Makeba at a public memorial service in her native Johannesburg at the weekend, The Star newspaper reported Friday.

Makeba, Africa's first Grammy award winning singer and a leading anti-apartheid activist, died on Sunday in Italy after performing at a concert.

On Wednesday President Kgalema Motlanthe declared national days of mourning leading up to the funeral of the woman, known to her legions of fans worldwide as Mama Africa.

Johannesburg - International environmental lobby group Greenpeace opened its first office in Africa on Thursday in Johannesburg.

In a statement Greenpeace said having an office in Africa was part of its commitment "to tackling the most urgent environmental problems facing the continent - climate change, deforestation and overfishing."

Greenpeace also said it would open a second office later this month in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo and a third in Dakar, Senegal in 2009.

Johannesburg - When Zafar Wahid, a project manager with Liberty Life insurance company, was relieved of his car at gunpoint in Johannesburg recently, he knew exactly where to go to get a knock-down replacement.

On an unseasonably cold summer's evening, Wahid, still wearing his work trousers and tie, walks past a string of cars in Burchmore's showroom in northern Johannesburg, towards the auction room, where around 200 people are crammed into rows of tiered plastic seats.

Johannesburg - Twenty-five people were killed in South Africa's eastern Mpumalanga province Wednesday when two trucks, one of which was taking people to work, collided head-on and overturned, SAfm public radio reported.

The radio report said only two out of 27 people involved in the early-morning crash had survived. It was not clear whether they were injured.

Emergency workers were at the scene to try to remove victims trapped in the wreckage.

Mpumalanga is a busy transit corridor linking Gauteng province, Africa's wealthiest region where Johannesburg is located, with Maputo and Beira ports across the border in Mozambique.