The mafia ”boss of bosses” who had eluded Italian police for more than four decades was finally captured in Sicily on Tuesday as most of his compatriots had their attention focused on a different kind of ruthless power struggle. The man nicknamed ”the tractor”, because of the way he crushed his opponents, was arrested without a shot being fired near his home town of Corleone.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Tuesday night refused to concede he had been defeated in Italy’s general election and called for a re-examination of tens of thousands of votes that he said could alter the outcome. After a day of sullen silence in which official results gave a slender victory to the centre-left in both houses of Parliament, Italy’s Berlusconi said Italy should consider forming a German-style cross-party ”grand alliance”.
On the banks of Africa’s largest lake, a deadly cocktail of poverty, prostitution and tribal widow inheritance practices is fuelling a surge in HIV/Aids even as progress is made in other areas. Here in Western Kenya where the water and fish from Lake Victoria are lifelines, communities are struggling against an alarming new rise in HIV/Aids cases that has plunged residents into despair.
South Africans are deeply xenophobic. This unpleasant fact has been borne out by public opinion research since 1995, and can be seen in the all too frequent attacks on immigrants and popular calls for stiffer controls on immigration. Significantly, these attitudes are not the result of first-hand experience with foreigners.
There’s an advert emblazoned on the sides of London double-decker buses for a computer game: ”Paste your girlfriend’s white bits here.” Another irritating sexualisation of public space, another insistent, insidious message of how culture shapes expectations of our sexuality.
Jesus may have appeared to be walking on water when he was actually floating on a thin layer of ice, formed by a rare combination of weather and water conditions on the Sea of Galilee, according to a team of United States and Israeli scientists. Their study argues that salty springs along the Galilee’s western shore can stop surface water circulating at cold temperatures and there were unusually cold spells, lasting up to 200 years, in biblical times.
Click on image for full-size view.
"Not suitable for children under 17", says the box of the little Blow-Up dolls. Nothing to do with sex, the bright plastic figurines have a bomb-shaped head with a fuse, and angry eyes telling you they’re ready to blow up any minute. The display of Dunnys — little plastic creatures — on the same shelf states: "This is a work of art, not a toy."
The state of health care in the Eastern Cape under the stewardship of sacked provincial minister Bevan Goqwana had been ”deplorable”, the watchdog Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) said on Tuesday. ”The PSAM calls on the premier to urgently appoint a suitably qualified replacement,” the Grahamstown-based organisation said in a media statement.
Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Tuesday that the Islamic republic will ”soon join the club of countries that have nuclear technology”, state television reported. The announcement came 15 days before the expiry of a United Nations Security Council deadline for Iran to slam the brakes on its uranium enrichment programme.